Law Commons^™

United We Stand, Divided We Fall? An Inquiry Into The Values And Shortcomings Of Uniform Methodology For Statutory Interpretation, Chelsea A. Bunge-Bollman

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

How should courts interpret statutes? This question has fueled generations of debate. Some believe generally that legislative intent should be understood based on the greater purpose of the statute; others believe that would be “pure applesauce” and the legislative intent should be understood through the plain meaning of the statute as written. Where one lands on that spectrum dictates the acceptable use of various tools for statutory interpretation, from legislative history to dictionaries. But, this is largely a theoretical exercise because statutory interpretation is messy in practice. The judiciary employs a variety of methodologies across cases, courts, time periods, and …

Should Affirmative Action Public Contracts Constitute Government Benefits? Calculating Procurement Fraud Loss Under Section 2b1.1(B)(1), Adam Kwon

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Congress has established a program (the section 8(a) program) that, despite having taken various forms over the years, has worked to benefit disadvantaged business entities and, by extension, the socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals who run them by setting aside and awarding to those entities opportunities to perform on certain designated public contracts. Occasionally, people either lie ex ante or fail to fulfill obligations ex post in order to fraudulently procure these section 8(a) contracts (i.e., they commit procurement fraud).

This fairly esoteric area of the law is disoriented by a circuit split over how to sentence such white-collar defendants (if convicted) …