READING STATUTES IN THE COMMON LAW TRADITION

There is wide agreement in American law and scholarship about the role the common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Ju-rists and scholars of various stripes concur that the common law points away from formalist interpretive approaches like textualism and toward a more creative, indepe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Virginia law review 2015-09, Vol.101 (5), p.1357-1424
Main Author: Pojanowski, Jeffrey A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attorneys
COMMON LAW
Constitutional law
Judges
Judges & magistrates
Jurisprudence
Law
Law schools
Lawyer client communication
Legal research
Legislation
Legislatures
LEGITIMACY
Liability (Law)
Methodology
Reading
Rule of law
SEPARATION OF POWERS
State court decisions
State laws
Statutes
STATUTORY INTERPRETATION
Statutory law
Traditions
U.S. states
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:There is wide agreement in American law and scholarship about the role the common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Ju-rists 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 often claim the Anglo-American common law heritage supports their approach to statutory interpretation, and that formalism is an unjustified break from that tradition. Many formalists reply that the common law mindset and methods are obsolete and inimical to a modern legal system of separated powers. They argue that because the legal center of gravity has shifted from courts to complex statutory regimes, judicial interpreters, especially at the federal level, should no longer understand themselves as bearers of the common law tradition.
ISSN:0042-6601