A legal history of the Oxford Comma

It's the love of grammar-nerds and the subject of contempt for Vampire Weekend, however the Oxford comma is also the subject of a recent legal decision. The humble Oxford comma (or serial comma) is used to denote whether the next item in a series of items is a subset of the previous item or a continuation of that series. The most famous example cited is the following fictitious book dedication: To my parents, Ayn Rand and God. Without the use of the Oxford comma, the sentence suggests that the book is dedicated to the author's parents happen to be Ayn Rand and God. Of course, in some situations including the Oxford comma can create its own ambiguity, such as if the above example were slightly modified to: To my mother, Ayn Rand and God.