strict constructionin a sentence
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But Atticus had once told us that in Judge Taylor's court any lawyer who was a strict constructionist on evidence usually wound up receiving strict instructions from the bench.
(source)
strict constructionist = a philosophy of judicial interpretation that restricts judges in their inferences
- They were strict constructionists and rigorous observers of the Law as found in the books of Moses; but they held the vast mass of Rabbinical addenda to those books in derisive contempt.† (source)