Law Commons^™

In The Shadow Of The Legislature: The Common Law In The Age Of The New Public Law, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey

Daniel A Farber

In this essay, we explore how modem common law judges should view their role vis-a-vis the legislature. We suggest that the perspective of the "New Public Law," as we conceptualize it, is surprisingly helpful in considering this problem.

In Part I, we briefly summarize two important aspects of the New Public Law: republicanism and public choice. We then address an obvious objection to our project - that our topic relates to private law, and is therefore outside the purview of the New Public Law. Part II turns to important questions about the relationship between statutes and the common law: When …

Statutory Constraints And Constitutional Decisionmaking, Anthony O'Rourke

Anthony O'Rourke

Although constitutional scholars frequently analyze the relationships between courts and legislatures, they rarely examine the relationship between courts and statutes. This Article is the first to systematically examine how the presence or absence of a statute can influence constitutional doctrine. It analyzes pairs of cases that raise similar constitutional questions, but differ with respect to whether the court is reviewing the constitutionality of legislation. These case pairs suggest that statutes place significant constraints on constitutional decisionmaking. Specifically, in cases that involve a challenge to a statute, courts are less inclined to use doctrine to regulate the behavior of nonjudicial officials. …

Statutory Interpretation As A Parasitic Endeavor, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The principal theme of this essay is that statutory interpretation is a project that requires advocates and judges to utilize the insights of three discrete disciplines apart from law: communications and linguistics to understand the way that legislative drafters use words to communicate to others, either in text or in extratextual legislative material; political science to describe the way that legislators behave in enacting statutes; and political theory to provide a normative guide for courts interpreting statutes in a constitutional democracy.

The Limited Relevance Of Plain Meaning, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

In this essay, the author takes the position that linguists' principal expertise - ascertaining how language is used by ordinary speakers of English - is often of little value in interpreting controversial non-criminal federal statutes. Although linguistic techniques might still aid in understanding their meaning, the author's thesis is that extrinsic evidence that is known and accessible to this small sub-community - such as legislative history, established norms of construction, and other evidence about the context in which the legislation arose - is more likely than linguistic analysis to help an outside judge shed light on what Congress meant and …

Statutory Interpretation Stories, William Eskridge, Philip Frickey, Elizabeth Garrett, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Stephen Ross contributed the chapter "The Story of Flood v. Kuhn: Dynamic Statutory Interpretation, At the Time. This title tackles the leading cases in the emerging statutory interpretation canon, as reflected in the casebooks. For each case, the leading scholar provides historical background (including details about the participants), a procedural history of the case, and an analysis of doctrinal and other lessons from the case. - From the Publisher

Reaganist Realism Comes To Detriot, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Part I of this article discusses Detroit Newspapers and explains how in deferring to the Attorney General's interpretation of the Newspaper Preservation Act, Judge Silberman disregarded every applicable technique of statutory interpretation typically used to resolve the issue. Indeed, each of these techniques suggests that Attorney General Meese's interpretation of the Act was incorrect. This part of the article also demonstrates why deference to Meese was particularly inappropriate in light of the generally accepted justifications for judicial deference to administrative interpretations of statutes.

Part II explains that Detroit Newspapers is one of several opinions by conservative Reagan judicial appointees that …

Predicting The Fallout From King V. Burwell - Exchanges And The Aca, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

Timothy S. Jost

The U.S. Supreme Court's surprise announcement on November 7 that it would hear King v. Burwell struck fear in the hearts of supporters of the Affordable Cara Act (ACA). At stake is the legality of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule extending tax credits to the 4.5 million people who bought their health plans in the 34 states that declined to establish their own health insurance exchanges under the ACA. The case hinges on enigmatic statutory language that seems to link the amount of tax credits to a health plan purchased "through an Exchange established by the State." According to …

Reading Statutes In The Common Law Tradition, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

There is wide agreement in American law and scholarship about the role the common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Jurists and scholars of various stripes concur that the common law points away from formalist interpretive approaches like textualism and toward a more creative, independent role for courts. They simply differ over whether the common law tradition is worth preserving. Dynamic and strongly purposive interpreters claim the Anglo-American common law heritage in support of their approach to statutory interpretation, while arguing that formalism is an unjustified break from that tradition. Formalists reply that the common law mindset and methods are …

King V. Burwell And The Rise Of The Administrative State, Ronald D. Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a complex law totaling nearly a thousand pages in length. The litigation now before the Supreme Court in King v. Burwell presents, on the surface, a simple issue of statutory interpretation. However, that surface has a very thin veneer. If the Court allows administrators carte blanche to change the very words of a statute, we will have come a long way towards governance by bureaucrats. Over the years, Congress has delegated many of its powers, but it has never delegated the power to raise taxes or spend tax subsidies in ways …

Are Housekeepers Like Judges?, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

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 …

The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Scaled Legislation & The Legal History Of The Common Good, Jill M. Fraley

Jill M. Fraley

None available.

Reconsidering Statutory Interpretive Divergence Between Elected And Appointed Judges, Bertrall L. Ross

Bertrall L Ross

No abstract provided.

Book Review - 'The Elements Of Legislation' By Neil Duxbury, Brian Christopher Jones

Brian Christopher Jones

No abstract provided.

Against Constitutional Mainstreaming, Bertrall L. Ross

Bertrall L Ross

Courts interpret statutes in hard cases. Statutes are frequently ambiguous, and an enacting legislature cannot foresee all future applications of a statute. The Supreme Court in these cases often chooses statutory interpretations that privilege the values that it has emphasized in its recent constitutional jurisprudence. In doing so, the Court rejects alternative interpretations that are more consistent with the values embodied in more recently enacted statutes. This is constitutional mainstreaming—an interpretive practice that molds statutes toward the Court’s own preferred values and away from values favored by legislative majorities.

In addition to providing a novel descriptive framework for what the …

Book Review - 'The Language Of Statutes' By Lawrence M. Solan, Brian Christopher Jones

Brian Christopher Jones

No abstract provided.

Legislative Histories And The Practice Of Statutory Interpretation In Wyoming, Debora A. Person

Debora A. Person

No abstract provided.