Jurisprudence Commons^™

Supreme Silence And Precedential Pragmatism: King V. Burwell And Statutory Interpretation In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Michael J. Cedrone

Marquette Law Review

This Article studies statutory interpretation as it is practiced in the federal

courts of appeal. Much of the academic commentary in this field focuses on the

Supreme Court, which skews the debate and unduly polarizes the field. This

Article investigates more broadly by looking at the seventy-two federal

appellate cases that cite King v. Burwell in the two years after the Court issued

its decision. In deciding that the words “established by the State” encompass

a federal program, the Court in King reached a pragmatic and practical result

based on statutory scheme and purpose at a fairly high level of …

Juxtaposition And Intent: Analyzing Legal Interpretation Through The Lens Of Literary Criticism, Joel Graczyk

Marquette Law Review

Disagreement exists within both the literary and legal communities about authorial intent’s proper role in interpretation. In an effort to balance textualism’s strict limits with intentionalism’s risk of constructed meaning, this Comment approaches the debate from a literary perspective focused on the text but open to limited evidence of the author’s intended meaning. Some literary critics suggest that evidence of an author’s understanding of and associations with particular words can provide a useful tool for objective interpretation. A judge drawing on such evidence could analyze statutory text by juxtaposing a statute’s language with limited evidence of the enacting legislature’s understanding …