Statutes in Common Law Courts

The Supreme Court teaches that federal courts, unlike their counterparts in the states, are not general common law courts. Nevertheless, a perennial point of contention among federal law scholars is whether and how a court's common law powers affect its treatment of statutes. Textualists point...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Texas law review 2013-02, Vol.91 (3), p.479
Main Author: Pojanowski, Jeffrey A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Common law
Debates
Federal courts
Jurisprudence
State court decisions
State courts
Statutes of limitations
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Summary:The Supreme Court teaches that federal courts, unlike their counterparts in the states, are not general common law courts. Nevertheless, a perennial point of contention among federal law scholars is whether and how a court's common law powers affect its treatment of statutes. Textualists point to federal courts' lack of common law powers to reject purposivist statutory interpretation. Critics of textualism challenge this characterization of federal courts' powers, leveraging a more robust notion of the judicial power to support purposivist or dynamic interpretation. This disagreement has become more important in recent years with the emergence of a refreshing movement in the theory of statutory interpretation. While debate about federal statutory interpretation has settled into a holding pattern, scholars have begun to consider whether state courts should interpret statutes differently than federal courts and, if so, the implications of that fact for federal and general interpretation.
ISSN:0040-4411
1942-857X