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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Evolutionary Statutory Interpretation: Mr. Justice Scalia Meets Darwin, Jeffrey G. Miller
Evolutionary Statutory Interpretation: Mr. Justice Scalia Meets Darwin, Jeffrey G. Miller
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This paper examines the seeming contrast between the legal doctrines that the interpretation of statutes can evolve over time and that the interpretation of statutes must be grounded only in their texts, which never change unless amended by Congress. That examination is illuminated by complexity and meme theories. The examination is concluded by applying both doctrines and theories to the question of whether the term “navigable water” in a water pollution control statute includes underground water.
Restoring What’S Environmental About Environmental Law In The Supreme Court, Richard J. Lazarus
Restoring What’S Environmental About Environmental Law In The Supreme Court, Richard J. Lazarus
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this Article, Professor Richard Lazarus examines the votes of the individual Justices who have decided environmental law cases before the United States Supreme Court during the past three decades. The Article reports on a number of interesting statistics regarding the identity of those Justices who have most influenced the Court's environmental law jurisprudence and the sometimes curious patterns in voting exhibited by individual Justices. Lazarus's thesis is that the Supreme Court's apparent apathy or even antipathy towards environmental law during that time results from the Justices' failure to appreciate environmental law as a distinct area of law. The Justices …