The recent
decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Corporation
Tax cases and the Standard Oil Case are examples: in each of these what
was at issue was the exact meaning of the words used in certain statutes
passed by Congress. In the common law, too, there are many phrases which
have come down from past centuries, the meanings of which have been
defined again and again as new cases came up. We have seen (p. 63) how
careful definition the word "murder" may need. "Malice aforethought" is
another familiar instance: it sounds simple, but when one begins to fix
the limits at which sudden anger passes over into cool and deliberate
enmity, or how far gone a man must be in drink before he loses the
consciousness of his purposes, even a layman can see that it has
difficulties.
In such cases as these a dictionary definition would be merely a
starting point. It may be a very useful starting point, however, as in
the following extract from an article by Mr. E.P. Ripley, president of
the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company, on "The Railroads
and the People":
There is one point regarding this matter that many forget: this is that
in all affairs there are two kinds of discrimination. There is the kind,
which, as the dictionary expresses it, "sets apart as being different,"
which "distinguishes accurately," and there is the widely different kind
which "treats unequally.
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