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Statutory Interpretation From The Inside--An Empirical Study Of Congressional Drafting, Delegation, And The Canons: Part I, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Abbe R. Gluck

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What role should the realities of the legislative drafting process play in the theories and doctrines of statutory interpretation and administrative law? The ongoing debates frequently turn on empirical assumptions about how Congress drafts and what interpretive rules Congress knows, but there has been almost no testing of whether any of these assumptions reflect legislative reality. We have attempted to fill that void. This is the first of two Articles reporting the results of the most extensive empirical study to date — a survey of 137 congressional counsels drawn from both parties, both chambers of Congress and spanning multiple committees …