Law Commons^™

The Costs Of Incoherence: A Comment On Plain Meaning, West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc. V. Casey, And Due Process Of Statutory Interpretation, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Theodore M. Shaw

Vanderbilt Law Review

Karl Llewellyn's classic article on the canons of statutory construction, which we rightly celebrate in this Symposium, is too clever by half. To the reader untutored in the scholarly literature on statutory interpretation, the "thrust but parry" pairing of the canons is a delightful demonstration of how legal argument is structured in a way guaranteed to maintain discretion in the judiciary and to keep lawyers in business. No case involving a statute is clear cut because the canons can lend support to either side. This means that no lawyer is without an argument, and a judge is free to do …

The Burden Of Proving Competence To Stand Trial: Due Process At The Limits Of Adversarial Justice, Benjamin J. Vernia

Vanderbilt Law Review

A defendant's mental competence to stand trial is a fundamental prerequisite to participation in our adversarial system of criminal justice, but proving that this requirement is satisfied presents unique challenges. While an incompetent defendant's inability to comprehend the nature of the proceedings or to assist his attorney challenges the very validity of the adversarial system, most jurisdictions rely on that same adversarial system to resolve questions of competence. These questions about the competence of the defendant and the legitimate scope of the adversarial system all arise in the context of the competency hearing procedure.

The burden of proof in competency …