This Court normally interprets a statute in accord with the ordinary public meaning of its terms at the time of its enactment. After all, only the wo… - Neil Gorsuch

If you were to sit down to read through all of our criminal laws and regulations- or at least flip through them- you would find plenty of surprises, too. You would learn, for example, that it's a federal crime to "injure[]" a government-owned lamp in Washington, D.C., consult with a known pirate, or advertise wine by suggesting its intoxicating qualities. The truth is, we now have so many federal criminal laws covering so many things that one scholar suggests that "there is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cnanot be indicted for some federal crime." In case you think that's an exaggeration, he adds: "That is not an exaggeration."
It's a state of affairs that sometimes makes it hard not to wonder how far we have left to travel to a world described by Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of Joseph Stalin's secret police, who was reputed to have bragged, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Don't think it can happen here? Ask John Yates, who was convicted for an offense he'd probably never heard of, one that few would have imagined would apply to him, and one that robbed him and his family of the life they cherished.

It seems well past time to reconsider our sweeping UPL [Unauthorized Practice of Law] prohibitions. The fact is nonlawyers already perform — and have long performed — many kinds of work traditionally and simultaneously performed by lawyers. Nonlawyers prepare tax returns and give tax advice. They regularly negotiate with and argue cases before the Internal Revenue Service. They prepare patent applications and otherwise advocate on behalf of inventors before the Patent & Trademark Office. And it is entirely unclear why exceptions should exist to help these sort of niche (and some might say, financially capable) populations but not be expanded in ways more consciously aimed at serving larger numbers of lower- and middle-class clients. . . . Consistent with the law of supply and demand, increasing the supply of legal services can be expected to lower prices, drive efficiency, and improve consumer satisfaction.

The self-defining nature of intended actions can be illustrated by the case, developed earlier in this chapter, of the drivers who hit the child in the street. In one instance, we considered the driver who comes upon a child darting into the street. The driver hits and kills the child by accident. In doing so, the driver indubitably effects an awful result- the consequences he brings about are terrible and, as a result, we may censure and punish the driver. But we may very well treat him differently from another driver who intentionally hunts down the child with her car. For this latter driver, we may say that no punishment is harsh enough. What undergirds the difference in our reaction to the two drivers? It is the difference in their self-definition, volition, choice. The hunting driver expresses herself to the world through her actions, defines who she is and what she believes, in a very different way than the accidental driver. Thus, what really illuminates the darting child hypothetical and ones like it are not arguments over causation but an assessment of human intentions.