"To justify a departure from the letter of the law upon that ground, the absurdity must be so gross as to shock the general moral or common sense", with an outcome "so contrary to perceived social values that Congress could not have 'intended' it". Clear statement rule When a statute may be interpreted to abridge long-held rights of individuals or states, or make a large policy change, courts will not interpret the statute to make the change unless the legislature clearly stated it. This rule is based on the assumption that the legislature would not make major changes in a vague or unclear way, and to ensure that voters are able to hold the appropriate legislators responsible for the modification. (Subsequent laws repeal those before enacted to the contrary, aka "Last in Time") When two statutes conflict, the one enacted last prevails. See implied repeal and derogation. Criticism Critics of the use of canons argue that canons impute some sort of "omniscience" to the legislature, suggesting that it is aware of the canons when constructing the laws. In addition, it is argued that the canons give a credence to judges who want to construct the law a certain way, imparting a false sense of justification to their otherwise arbitrary process. In a classic article, Karl Llewellyn argued that every canon had a "counter-canon" that would lead to the opposite interpretation of the statute. Some scholars argue that interpretive canons should be understood as an open set, despite conventional assumptions that traditional canons capture all relevant language generalizations. Empirical evidence, for example, suggests that ordinary people readily incorporate a "nonbinary gender canon" and "quantifier domain restriction canon" in the interpretation of legal rules. U.S. courts The common textual canons of statutory construction employed in American jurisprudence are: Ejusdem generis – "of the same kinds, class, or nature" Expressio unius est exclusio alterius – "the express mention of one thing excludes all others" Noscitur a sociis – "a word is known by the company it keeps" In pari materia – "upon the same matter or subject" Common, technical, legal, or trade definition. European perception The French philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755) believed that courts should act as "the mouth of the law", but soon it was found that some interpretation is inevitable. Following the German scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779–1861) the four main interpretation methods are: Grammatical interpretation: using the literal meaning of