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Full-Text Articles in Law
Purposeless Construction, David M. Driesen
Purposeless Construction, David M. Driesen
David M Driesen
This Article critiques the Supreme Court’s tendency to embrace “purposeless construction”— statutory construction that ignores legislation’’ underlying goals. It constructs a new democratic theory supporting purposeful construction, defined as an approach to construction that favors construction of ambiguous text to advance a statute’s underlying goal. That theory maintains that statutory goals, especially those set out in the legislative text or frequently proclaimed in public, tend to reflect public values to a greater extent than other statutory provisions. Politicians carefully choose goals for statutes that “sell” the statute to the public. In order to do this, they must announce goals for …
Job Loss And The Incohernet Expansion Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, David M. Driesen
Job Loss And The Incohernet Expansion Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, David M. Driesen
David M Driesen
This piece discusses the question of whether regulatory agencies should quantify job loss stemming from government regulation for purposes of cost-benefit analysis. It argues that doing so produces biased analysis through double counting of regulatory costs and asymmetric analysis. It also argues that the dollar value of job loss defies quantification.