"trench on"

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Mon Jun 18 15:43:37 UTC 2012


" Imposing a broad and ill-defined duty on all women to summon
medical intervention during childbirth would trench on their
'protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment,'
" Lenk wrote, quoting from a previous court case.

Justice Barbara Lenk, for the court in a decision of the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court June 15.

OED2 "trench, v.", presumably 7.b. "to trench on or upon : To
encroach or infringe (however slightly) on or upon a region which is
the domain of another."  (For the little it's worth, the OED's most
recent quotation is 1866.)

I don't know whether this is sufficiently rare to be interesting (it
was new to me), and it is difficult to Google.

Joel

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