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Full-Text Articles in Law
"Is That English You're Speaking?" Why Intention Free Interpretation Is An Impossibility, Larry Alexander, Saikrishna Prakash
"Is That English You're Speaking?" Why Intention Free Interpretation Is An Impossibility, Larry Alexander, Saikrishna Prakash
San Diego Law Review
"Textualism" is a very general and abstract term that represents a variety of views about the interpretation of legal texts. One strand of textualism is conceptual and descriptive; this strand makes claims about what texts actually mean. Another strand of textualism is normative; this strand makes claims about how judges ought to proceed when they interpret particular kinds of legal texts, such as constitutions and statutes. In the first part of this paper, we are particularly concerned with an especially strong form of conceptual textualism - the position that texts can be interpreted without any reference, express or implied, to …
A Constitutional Defense Of Legislative History, Paul E. Mcgreal
A Constitutional Defense Of Legislative History, Paul E. Mcgreal
ExpressO
This essay sets forth an original, constitutional defense of legislative history in statutory interpretation that challenges conventional textualist wisdom. Textualists believe that the Constitution requires judges to focus on statutory text to the exclusion of legislative history. This is because only text, and not the committee reports and debates that constitute legislative history, passes through the Constitution’s law making steps of bicameralism (passage by both chambers of Congress) and presentment (delivery of the bill for the President’s signature or veto). Thus, textualists argue, only the statute’s text is enacted law, and judges ought to consider that law and nothing else. …
The Divergence Of Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kevin M. Stack
The Divergence Of Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
There is a peculiar point of agreement between prominent defenders of originalist and dynamic interpretive methods, that their preferred interpretive approach applies not just to statutes or to the Constitution, but to both. In this Article, I challenge this shared position - as represented by Justice Antonin Scalia's originalist textualism and Professor William Eskridge's dynamic interpretive theory. I argue that the democratic and rule-of-law values that these theories invoke in fact suggest that different interpretive approaches govern constitutional and statutory interpretation. I contend, first, that disjunctures between the democratic justification for originalism in constitutional and statutory interpretation reveal the distinct …
Tools, Not Rules: The Heuristic Nature Of Statutory Interpretation, Morell E. Mullins Sr.
Tools, Not Rules: The Heuristic Nature Of Statutory Interpretation, Morell E. Mullins Sr.
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.