Trump v. Cook · ¶142

The Court thus invokes, apparently in the alternative, the principle that statutory terms should be interpreted consistently with prior judicial constructions of those terms. Under the prior-construction principle, “when judicial interpretations have settled the meaning of an existing statutory provision, repetition of the same language in a new statute is presumed to incorporate that interpretation.” Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U. S. 320, 330 (2015) (internal quotation marks omitted). Earlier this Term, this Court held that the prior-construction principle does not permit a court to depart from the ordinary meaning of a statutory term, as the Court does here, unless the earlier judicial constructions of that term were ubiquitous and unanimous: “[T]o conclude that Congress incorporated a judicial definition into a statutory term,” “we have required” a “‘broad and…

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