Bryan A. Garner

Bryan A. Garner (born Nov. 17, 1958) is an American lawyer, grammarian, and lexicographer. He also writes on jurisprudence (and occasionally golf). He is the author of over 25 books, the best-known of which are Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed. 2016) and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012—coauthored with Justice Antonin Scalia), as well as four unabridged editions of Black’s Law Dictionary. He serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University. He also teaches from time to time at the University of Texas School of Law, Texas A&M School of Law, and Texas Tech School of Law.

In 2009, he was named Legal-Writing and Reference-Book Author of the Decade at a Burton Awards ceremony at the Library of Congress. He has received many other awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Book Award, the Scribes Book Award, the Bernie Siegan Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Plain Language.

His work has played a central role in our understanding of modern judging, advocacy, grammar, English usage, legal lexicography, and the common-law system of precedent. His books are frequently cited by American courts of all levels, including the United States Supreme Court.

His friendship with the novelist David Foster Wallace is memorialized in Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace and Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing (2013). His friendship and writing partnership with Justice Antonin Scalia is depicted in the memoir Nino and Me: My Unusual Friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia (2018).