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Exercise: Definition Section
For this assignment, we will consider a method of statutory interpretation that goes a bit beyond the plain meaning of the immediate statute to discover that other statutes may provide a definition of certain terms. Sometimes the definition section appears within the statute or adjacent to the statute. Other times it appears farther away, and you must search for it. The purpose of the exercise below is to learn that you must always be aware that terms that seem obvious may nevertheless have specific definitions that will change the outcome in particular cases, and that those definitions might appear in a completely different statute.
Just as an example we have already encountered, remember in the Staples case how federal law defined "firearm" quite differently from its ordinary definition.
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