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Golden Gate University School of Law

Publications

Other Law

1997

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Statuory Interpretation, Democratic Legitimacy And Legal-System Values, Karen Gebbia Jan 1997

Statuory Interpretation, Democratic Legitimacy And Legal-System Values, Karen Gebbia

Publications

This Article reexamines the current debate and concludes that democratic legitimacy is not a sufficient litmus test by which to ex-plain the differences among competing interpretive models nor to compare their viability. I argue that broader meta-principles, which I term "legal-system values," significantly influence current interpretive models and should be an integral focus of the statutory interpretation debate, but often are obscured by theorists' emphasis on democratic legitimacy.