Reddit reviews Black's Law Dictionary, 10th Edition

We agree on what the law should be, so there's no need to debate that.

But you are dead wrong about definitions. Lots and lots of words have a legal definition that is different from a common dictionary definition. Go to any law school library or courthouse library and you will find legal dictionaries devotes entirely to legal definitions. You'll be surprised how unfamiliar the definitions of familiar terms are in many cases.

Here's Black's Law Dictionary - you'll find this on the shelf in many Canadian firms: https://www.amazon.ca/Blacks-Law-Dictionary-10th-Hardcover/dp/0314613005

What the court did (and what courts should do), is looked at the definitions of the terms, as intended by Parliament, at the time the law was passed. In this case the law was passed in 1954. Of course there are diffierent judicial philosophies in statutory interpretation but the prevalent philosophy is to try to interpret a statute to mean what is was intended to mean by the government that passed it.

Here's an example: in the present day, you wouldn't interpret the Second Amendment simply by going to a present-day dictionary and looking up "arms". Interpretation would be the task of learning the meaning of that term as it was when the Amendment was formulated, what the framers intended it to mean going forward, the surrounding documents at the time, etc.

Anyway, the actual decision is worth a read if you are interested.

This is the current edition of Black's. Write something nice in the front and he will treasure it always.

A gift certificate for something nice that's not to far from law school is a great choice, either in addition to or instead of Black's. Like a nice restaurant (when I came home for Thanksgiving my first year, my parents asked where I wanted to go to dinner the night before. I said "somewhere with a waitress"), or maybe to a Massage Envy type of place. Or hell, even a $10 gift card for Cold Stone Creamery or somewhere he probably wouldn't choose to go himself.

Planners are very personal (for the people still using them instead of their phones) and if you wanted to go that route, I'd get a gift card to the store and let him pick one out himself.

You're so linear.
Go grab a Black's Law Dictionary and define those terms under their legal meaning and not your interpretation of them.

Never said The Church of satan wasn't a legal religion. So is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That doesn't mean I thing alot of Pastafarians should come dressed as pirates to essentially disrupt a tradition that myself & others consider to be very important.

For the record, I don't hate strippers. Why would you assume I do?
I don't approve of their choices of profession but that's the same for many things. I don't hate. It's not in my nature.