Law Commons^™

Putting Legislative History To A Vote: A Response To Professor Siegel, John F. Manning

Vanderbilt Law Review

In a previous article, I argued that, properly understood, textualism implements a special form of the nondelegation doctrine, one that prohibits legislative self-delegation.' If the judiciary accepts certain types of legislative history (committee reports and sponsors' statements) as "authoritative" evidence of legislative in- tent in cases of ambiguity, then the particular legislators who write that history (the committees and sponsors) effectively settle statutory meaning for Congress as a whole. Against the background of such a judicially fashioned interpretive practice, when Congress passes a vague or ambiguous statute, it thereby implicitly delegates its law-elaboration authority to legislative agents, who effectively fashion …