What can be said in favor of the claim that legal interpretation seeks linguistic meaning? It is often taken as a starting point that interpretation is the activity of attributing meaning. (e.g., Knapp and Michaels 1982; 1983; Graglia 1992; Fish 2005; 2008; Michaels 2009; Alexander 2013). By definition, one version of the argument goes, interpretation of any object seeks its meaning – presumably in the strict sense of what that object symbolizes or represents. (If “meaning” were intended in the loose sense of significance, the argument could yield no real constraint on legal interpretation.) A different but related argument is that legal interpretation is an instance of linguistic interpretation, and linguistic interpretation seeks linguistic meaning (e.g., Soames, 2009; Alexander 2011).