Law Commons^™

Textualism As Fair Notice?, Benjamin Minhao Chen

Washington Law Review

The opportunity to know the law is one of the bedrocks of legality. It is also a powerful and attractive reason for giving statutory language the meaning it has in everyday discourse. To do otherwise would be to hide the law from those it governs.

Or so the argument goes. Despite its intuitive force, the fair notice argument for textualism is vulnerable to two challenges. The first challenge is to the notion that fair notice requires congruence between ordinary and legal meaning. There is no normative gauge for determining the time and expense people ought to spend learning their legal …

Macniven V. Westmoreland And Tax Advice Using “Purposive Textualism” To Deal With Tax Shelters And Promote Legitimate Tax Advice, Scott A. Schumacher

Articles

The last few years have seen a flurry of activity aimed at the tax shelter industry. Beginning with the “covered opinion” rules of Treasury Circular 230 in 2005, the government has adopted several changes to the standards applicable to tax advice, all in an effort stop abusive tax shelters. Most recently, both Congress (in 2007) and Treasury (in 2008) have revised the standards applicable to tax advice to require that a position have a “more likely than not” chance of succeeding on the merits, or the position must be disclosed to the IRS. While the government’s desire for reform is …

Textualism In Gatt/Wto Jurisprudence: Lessons For The Constitutionalization Debate, Dongsheng Zang

Articles

Today, the World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence is subject to tremendous controversy, the WTO panels' or Appellate Body's interpretation of a WTO text is often heatedly debated; and yet, there seems not much attention paid to the general methodology of interpretation in the practice of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) and WTO jurisprudence, even in a recent debate over constitutionalization between Petersmann and his critics. In rejecting his human rights approach to constitutionalization, Petersmann's critics, rightfully, warn him that he has failed to appreciate the complex relations between human rights and free trade in the history of …

Textual Imagination, Mary D. Fan

Articles

Textualism's revival illuminated the judicial imagination at play behind the search for congressional intent through legislative history. The Supreme Court’s decision in Buckhannon Board & Care Home v. West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources shows the Supreme Court’s mounting disregard for legislative history and concomitant attempt to erect replacement canons of statutory construction to guide textual interpretation. The opinion privileged a canon of statutory construction over the legislative record of congressional intent. Of more imminent and practical impact, Buckhannon invalidated the catalyst theory of awarding plaintiff’s fees to “prevailing parties” under statutes authorizing private attorneys general to bring …