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The Warp And Woof Of Statutory Interpretation: Comparing Supreme Court Approaches In Tax Law And Workplace Law, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
The Warp And Woof Of Statutory Interpretation: Comparing Supreme Court Approaches In Tax Law And Workplace Law, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Faculty Scholarship
Debates about statutory interpretation-and especially about the role of the canons of construction and legislative history-are generally framed in one-size-fits-all terms. Yet federal judges including most Supreme Court Justices-have not approached statutory interpretation from a methodologically uniform perspective. This Article presents the first in-depth examination of interpretive approaches taken in two distinct subject areas over an extended period of time. Professors Brudney and Ditslear compare how the Supreme Court has relied on legislative history and the canons of construction when construing tax statutes and workplace statutes from 1969 to 2008. The authors conclude that the Justices tend to rely on …
Liberal Justices' Reliance On Legislative History, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Liberal Justices' Reliance On Legislative History, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Faculty Scholarship
This Article presents a strong case against the conventional wisdom that legislative history is a "politicized'" resource, invoked opportunistically by federal judges. The premise that judges regularly rely on legislative history to promote their preferred policy positions-if true-should find ample support in the majority opinions of liberal Supreme Court Justices construing liberal (pro-employee) labor and civil rights statutes. By analyzing all 320-plus majority opinions in workplace law authored by eight liberal Justices from 1969-2006, the authors establish that legislative history reliance is actually associated with a constraining set of results. When the eight liberal Justices use legislative history as part …
Decline And Fall Of Legislative History - Patterns Of Supreme Court Reliance In The Burger And Rehnquist Eras, The, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Decline And Fall Of Legislative History - Patterns Of Supreme Court Reliance In The Burger And Rehnquist Eras, The, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Faculty Scholarship
Reliance on legislative history in the Court's majority opinions has fallen from nearly 50 percent during the Burger era to less than 30 percent since 1985.