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Full-Text Articles in Law
Interpretive Divergence All The Way Down: A Response To Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl And Ethan J. Leib, Elected Judges And Statutory Interpretation, 79 U Chi L Rev 1215 (2012), Anita S. Krishnakumar
Interpretive Divergence All The Way Down: A Response To Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl And Ethan J. Leib, Elected Judges And Statutory Interpretation, 79 U Chi L Rev 1215 (2012), Anita S. Krishnakumar
Faculty Publications
This article is a response to the law review article cited in its title. It focuses on a corollary question raised by the article's analysis: if one takes seriously the proposition that it may make sense for elected judges to interpret statutes differently than do appointed judges, should judicial opinions written by elected judges look substantially different from those written by appointed judges? Part I examines the relative roles of judicial opinions written by elected versus appointed judges in a world in which divergence is practiced. Part II explores specific ways in which we might want or expect an elected …
Obligatory Health, Noa Ben-Asher
Obligatory Health, Noa Ben-Asher
Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court will soon rule on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in March 2010. Courts thus far are divided on the question whether Congress had authority under the Commerce Clause to impose the Act's "Individual Mandate" to purchase health insurance. At this moment, the public and legal debate can benefit from a clearer understanding of the underlying rights claims. This Article offers two principal contributions. First, the Article argues that, while the constitutional question technically turns on the interpretation of congressional power under the Commerce Clause, underlying these debates is a tension between …
The Anti-Messiness Principle In Statutory Interpretation, Anita S. Krishnakumar
The Anti-Messiness Principle In Statutory Interpretation, Anita S. Krishnakumar
Faculty Publications
Many of the Supreme Court's statutory interpretation opinions reflect a juisprudential aversion to interpreting statutes in a manner that will prove "messy" for implementing courts to administer. Yet the practice of construing statutes to avoid "messiness" has gone largely unnoticed in the statutory interpretation literature. This Article seeks to illuminate the Court's use of "anti-messiness" arguments to interpret statutes and to bring theoretical attention to the principle of "messiness" avoidance. The Article begins by defining the concept of anti-messiness and providing a typology of common anti-messiness arguments used by the Supreme Court. It then considers some dangers inherent in the …