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Full-Text Articles in Law
Following Lower-Court Precedent, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl
Following Lower-Court Precedent, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl
Faculty Publications
This Article examines the role of lower-court precedent in the US Supreme Court’s decisions. The Supreme Court is rarely the first court to consider a legal question, and therefore the Court has the opportunity to be informed by and perhaps even persuaded by the views of the various lower courts that have previously addressed the issue. This Article considers whether the Court should give weight to lower-court precedent as a matter of normative theory and whether the Court in fact does so as a matter of practice. To answer the normative question, this Article analyzes a variety of potential reasons …
Against Methodological Stare Decisis, Evan J. Criddle, Glen Staszewski
Against Methodological Stare Decisis, Evan J. Criddle, Glen Staszewski
Faculty Publications
Should federal courts give stare decisis effect to statutory interpretation methodology? Although a growing number of legal scholars have answered this question in the affirmative, this Essay makes the case against methodological stare decisis. Drawing on recent empirical studies of Congress’s expectations regarding statutory interpretation, we show that existing knowledge of Congress’s expectations is insufficient to settle on one consistent approach to statutory interpretation. Moreover, Congress has almost certainly changed its expectations over time, and this raises serious problems for methodological stare decisis from the perspective of faithful-agency theories. We argue further that many theories and doctrines of statutory interpretation …