Page:United States v. Hansen.pdf/38

6 the majority notes that one legal dictionary “defines ‘abet’ as ‘[t]o encourage or set another on to commit a crime,’ ” and it cites other legal dictionaries that also use “encourage” to define “abet.” Similarly, the majority observes that the federal “ban on soliciting a crime of violence … penalizes those who ‘solici[t], comman[d], induc[e], or otherwise endeavo[r] to persuade’ another person ‘to engage in [the unlawful] conduct.’ ” Ibid. Because the terms “encourage” and “induce” are used to define the crimes of solicitation and facilitation, the majority concludes that the statutory terms “ ‘[e]ncourage’ and ‘induce’ have well-established legal meanings” that “incorporat[e] common-law liability for solicitation or facilitation.”

This contention—that, because the broad terms that Congress actually used are sometimes spotted in the definition of other, narrower words, the statute’s broad terms are limited by the meaning of those narrower words and those words’ characteristics—is puzzling. The majority cites no precedent for this novel approach to interpreting words in a statute. And its logic falls apart in light of the English lexicon and how dictionary definitions tend to work.

Broad words are often used to define narrower ones. So the fact that a word is used to help define another word does not necessarily mean that the former is synonymous with the latter or incorporates all of its connotations. For instance, the word “furniture” might be used in the definition of a “chair,” but not all pieces of furniture are chairs, nor do all pieces of furniture have four legs or other common chair-like characteristics. Similarly, “to move” is used to define “to walk,” “to run,” and “to fly.” But that does not make these four terms interchangeable.

So, too, here. The phrase “encourages or induces” is not synonymous with “solicits” or “facilitates” (or “aids and abets”). For example, among the other characteristics of solicitation and facilitation (discussed further in ) is the fact that they require “an intent to bring about