Jurisprudence Commons^™

Communicative Content And Legal Content, Lawrence B. Solum

Notre Dame Law Review

This Essay investigates a familiar set of questions about the relationship between legal texts (e.g., constitutions, statutes, opinions, orders, and contracts) and the content of the law (e.g., norms, rules, standards, doctrines, and mandates). Is the original meaning of the constitutional text binding on the Supreme Court when it develops doctrines of constitutional law? Should statutes be given their plain meaning or should judges devise statutory constructions that depart from the text to serve a purpose? What role should default rules play in the interpretation and construction of contracts? This Essay makes two moves that can help lawyers and legal …

Hierarchically Variable Deference To Agency Interpretations, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Notre Dame Law Review

When courts review agency action, they typically accord agency decisions a degree of deference. As many courts and commentators have recognized, the law in this area is complicated because it features numerous standards of review, including several distinct regimes for evaluating agencies’ legal interpretations. There is, however, at least one important respect in which uniformity rather than variety prevails: the applicable standards of review do not vary depending on which court is reviewing the agency. Whichever standard governs a particular case—Chevron, Skidmore, or something else—all courts in the judicial hierarchy are supposed to apply that same standard.

This Article proposes …

The Politics Of Statutory Interpretation, Margaret H. Lemos

Notre Dame Law Review

In a new book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner describe and defend the textualist methodology for which Justice Scalia is famous. For Scalia and Garner, the normative appeal of textualism lies in its objectivity: by focusing on text, context, and canons of construction, textualism offers protection against ideological judging—a way to separate law from politics. Yet, as Scalia and Garner well know, textualism is widely regarded as a politically conservative methodology. The charge of conservative bias is more common than it is concrete, but it reflects the notion that textualism narrows the …