Law Commons^™

Statutory Interpretation And Agency Disgorgement Power, Caprice Roberts

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In recent decades, the Supreme Court has showed enhanced interest in equitable principles and remedies. What began as periodic cases featuring one jurist’s idiosyncratic and sometimes misguided interpretations has manifested a broader, significant trend. A consequential theme emerges across varied cases: a revival in the Court’s emphasis on the jurisprudence of equitable remedies. The Court’s recent and current docket continues this momentum. Scholars are tracking the developments and advocating for a system of equity; focusing on historical constraints and federal equity power; and generating a restitution revival.

What happens when obstacles foreclose claims and threaten to leave parties without …

Purposivism In The Executive Branch: How Agencies Interpret Statutes, Kevin M. Stack

Northwestern University Law Review

After decades of debate, the lines of distinction between textualism and purposivism have been carefully drawn with respect to the judicial task of statutory interpretation. Far less attention has been devoted to the question of how executive branch officials approach statutory interpretation. While scholars have contrasted agencies’ interpretive practices from those of courts, they have not yet developed a theory of agency statutory interpretation.

This Article develops a purposivist theory of agency statutory interpretation on the ground that regulatory statutes oblige agencies to implement the statutes they administer in that manner. Regulatory statutes not only grant powers but also impose …

Interpreting Regulations, Kevin M. Stack

Michigan Law Review

The age of statutes has given way to an era of regulations, but our jurisprudence has fallen behind. Despite the centrality of regulations to law, courts have no intelligible approach to regulatory interpretation. The neglect of regulatory interpretation is not only a shortcoming in interpretive theory but also a practical problem for administrative law. Canonical doctrines of administrative law - Chevron, Seminole Rock/Auer, and Accardi - involve interpreting regulations, and yet courts lack a consistent approach. This Article develops a method for interpreting regulations and, more generally, situates regulatory interpretation within debates over legal interpretation. It argues that a purposive …