Securities & Exchange Commission v. Tambone

BOUDIN, Circuit Judge, with whom LYNCH, Chief Judge, joins,

concurring.

A “plain language” approach to statutory construction has well-known adherents, and — in construing the SEC’s rule at issue (“make any untrue statement of a material fact”) — bare wording forcefully supports Judge Selya’s thorough and persuasive decision. Yet even a more elastic “all things considered” reading of the rule’s language would not justify the alarmingly ambitious use of it that the agency seeks to deploy in this case.

The word “make,” in reference to a statement, ordinarily refers to one authoring the statement…