Lexicography and the Law

My language as a youth was often governed by the Good Book- that is The Dictionary.  If I was curious about the meaning of a particular word, or certainly about the spelling of that word, the voice, which in my memory becomes disembodied like one from a Charlie Brown cartoon, implores me to "look it up!"  And certainly, if the word in question was NOT in the dictionary, it was, by its very lack of a definition, not a word.  Next case, please.

This article by Adam Liptak from the New York Times describes the growing use of dictionaries by justices in federal courts.

An example given is Chief Justice Roberts looking up the meaning of the word "of" in five different dictionaries (and finding out that it means pretty much what you would think it means.)

“I think that it’s probably wrong, in almost all situations, to use a dictionary in the courtroom,” said Jesse Sheidlower , the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary.