of tariffs, imports and customs. Justice Horace Gray delivered the opinion of the Court in holding that the Tariff Act of 1883 used the ordinary meaning of the words "fruit" and "vegetable", instead of the technical botanical meaning.
In 1883, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, requiring a tax to be paid on imported vegetables, but not fruit. The John Nix & Co. company filed a suit against Edward L. Hedden, Collector of the Port of New York, to recover back duties paid under protest. They argued against the tariff by pointing out that, botanically, a tomato is a fruit due to its seed-bearing structure growing from the flowering part of a plant.
At the trial, the plaintiffs' counsel entered into evidence definitions of the words "fruit" and "vegetables" from Webster's Dictionary, Worcester's Dictionary, and the Imperial Dictionary. They called two witnesses, who had been in the business of selling fruit and vegetables for 30 years, and asked them, after hearing these definitions, to say whether these words had "any special meaning in trade or commerce, different from those read".
Both the plaintiffs' counsel and the defendant's counsel made use of the dictionaries. The plaintiffs' counsel read in evidence from the same dictionaries the definitions of the word tomato, while the defendant's counsel then read in evidence from Webster's Dictionary the definitions of the words pea, eggplant, cucumber, squash, and pepper. Countering this, the plaintiff then read in evidence from Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries the definitions of potato, turnip, parsnip, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot and bean.
Justice Gray, citing several Supreme Court cases (Brown v. Piper, 91 U.S. 37, 42, and Jones v. U.S., 137 U.S. 202, 216) stated that when words have acquired no special meaning in trade or commerce, the ordinary meaning must be used by the court. In this case dictionaries cannot be admitted as evidence, but only as aids to the memory and understanding of the court. Gray acknowledged that botanically, tomatoes are classified as a "fruit of the vine"; nevertheless, they are seen as vegetables because they were usually eaten as a main course instead of being eaten as a dessert. In making his decision, Justice Gray mentioned another case where it had been claimed that beans were seeds — Justice Bradley, in Robertson v. Salomon, 130 U.S. 412, 414, similarly found that though a bean is botanically a seed, in common parlance a bean is seen as a vegetable. While on the subject, Gray clarified the status of the cucumber, squash, pea, and bean.
Nix has been cited in three Supreme Court decisions as a precedent for court interpretation of common meanings, especially dictionary definitions. (Sonn v. Maggone, 159 U.S. 417 (1895); Saltonstall v. Wiebusch & Hilger, 156 U.S. 601 (1895); and Cadwalader v. Zeh, 151 U.S. 171 (1894)). Additionally, in JSG Trading Corp. v. Tray-Wrap, Inc., 917 F.2d 75 (2d Cir. 1990), a case unrelated to Nix aside from the shared focus on tomatoes, a judge wrote the following paragraph citing the case:
In common parlance tomatoes are vegetables, as the Supreme Court observed long ago [see Nix v. Hedden 149 U.S. 304, 307, 13 S.Ct. 881, 882, 37 L.Ed. 745 (1893)], although botanically speaking they are actually a fruit. [26 Encyclopedia Americana 832 (Int'l. ed. 1981)]. Regardless of classification, people have been enjoying tomatoes for centuries; even Mr. Pickwick, as Dickens relates, ate his chops in "tomata" sauce.
In 2005, supporters in the New Jersey legislature cited Nix as a basis for a bill designating the tomato as the official state vegetable.
What is the technical botanical meaning of vegetable? A tomato is a vegetable. It's fine. It's also a fruit. So what?
There's no botanical meaning of vegetable. That's a cooking term. In botany, you have different parts of the plant, like fruit, stem or root, you have different groups of plants, like the ginger family or monocots. And you can say a plant is edible or useful.
Exactly. I don't why it's always surprising to people that court battles are fought over legal definitions. That's how legal definitions are made.
Vegetables are not anything that is not a fruit. Tomatos are both, as are cucumbers. When you say "technically a fruit is blah blah blah", it says nothing about whether something is vegetable. The definition is from a different domain. The definition of vegetable seems to have to due with human digestion. The botanical definition of fruit doesn't care about the existence of humans. Vegetables are culinary and to some extent cultural. "Fruit" also has a culinary meaning, but its not technical in that domain. There is no way to "technically" distinguish between fruit and vegetables as "vegetable" isn't technically botanically defined.
"Vegetable" is a societal construct, separate from biological classification. Quite progressive, really.
If it were a fruit, it would fall under a different section of tariffs. The tariff has rules for rectangles but has an exemption/special case for squares.
That's a matter of law. Hence the 9-0 decision. It's still a fruit; it's still a vegetable.
Nah, it's not a fruit under law.
I wasn't talking about the law. I asked, "What is the technical botanical meaning of vegetable?". And you start talking about squares and rectangles.
Seemed like a rhetorical question to me, but sure. The technical botanical meaning of vegetable is any plant you can eat safely.
In this case, if the technical meanings were taken, the fruit rules would take precedence over the vegetable rules.
And did you get that from a botany textbook?