absurdity canon
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 271 U.S. 354 - United States v. Katz · 1926Most cited · 573 citing opinions
General terms descriptive of a class of persons made subject to a criminal statute may and should be limited, where the literal application of the statute would lead to extreme or absurd results, and where the legislative purpose gathered from the whole act would be satisfied by a more limited interpretation
How often courts cite the case defining “absurdity canon”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “absurdity canon” — 573 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.