Law Commons^™

The Presumption Of Constitutionality And The Individual Mandate, Gillian E. Metzger, Trevor W. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Every American law student learns that there is a difference between a statute's meaning and its constitutionality. A given case might well present both issues, but law students are taught that the questions are distinct and that their resolution requires separate analyses. This is all for good reason: the distinction between statutory meaning and constitutional validity is both real and important. But it is not complete. Any approach to statutory interpretation depends on a view about the appropriate role of the judiciary (or other institutional interpreter) in our constitutional system; "[a]ny theory of statutory interpretation is at base a theory …