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Full-Text Articles in Law

Are Housekeepers Like Judges?, Stephen P. Garvey Jul 1997

Are Housekeepers Like Judges?, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Professor Greenawalt proposes that we look at interpretation "from the bottom up." By taking a close look at informal relationships between an authority and his or her agent, and how the agent "faithfully performs" instructions within such relationships, he hopes to gain insight into the problems surrounding the interpretation of legal directives. The analysis of "faithful performance" in informal contexts which Professor Greenawalt presents in From the Bottom Up is the first step in a larger project. His next step is to see what lessons the interpretation of instructions in informal contexts has for law. This Comment tries to contribute …


From The Bottom Up, Kent Greenawalt Jan 1997

From The Bottom Up, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is about carrying out informal instructions given by people in authority. Although many scholars have written about how legal interpretation resembles interpretation in fields such as literature and religion, few have compared informal instructions and legal rules. My most basic assumption in this Article is that focus on informal situations can illumine the standards people use in performing instructions and the kinds of meaning they attribute to instructions. As my title implies, if we reflect on what amounts to faithful or desirable performance of informal directives and the more conceptual question of what these prescriptive standards "mean," we …