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Statutory Realism: The Jurisprudential Ambivalence Of Interpretive Theory, Abigail R. Moncrieff
Statutory Realism: The Jurisprudential Ambivalence Of Interpretive Theory, Abigail R. Moncrieff
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
In the renaissance of statutory interpretation theory, a division has emerged between "new purposivists," who argue that statutes should be interpreted dynamically, and "new textualists," who argue that statutes should be interpreted according to their ordinary semantic meanings. Both camps, however, rest their theories on jurisprudentially ambivalent commitments. Purposivists are jurisprudential realists when they make arguments about statutory meaning, but they are jurisprudential formalists in their views of the judicial power to engage in dynamic interpretation. Textualists are the inverse; they are formalistic in their understandings of statutory meaning but realistic in their arguments about judicial power. The relative triumph …
Absurdity And The Limits Of Literalism: Defining The Absurd Result Principle In Statutory Interpretation, Veronica Dougherty
Absurdity And The Limits Of Literalism: Defining The Absurd Result Principle In Statutory Interpretation, Veronica Dougherty
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
The absurd result principle in statutory interpretation provides an exception to the rule that a statute should be interpreted according to its plain meaning. In an age of increasing debate about the proper approach to statutory interpretation, and of increasing emphasis on literal approaches, the absurd result principle poses intriguing challenges to literalism and to theories of interpretation generally.The absurd result principle is extraordinarily powerful. It authorizes a judge to ignore a statute's plain words in order to avoid the outcome those words would require in a particular situation. This is a radical thing; judges are not supposed to rewrite …