Legislation

Much of American law is codified in statutes and administrative regulations. For lawyers, learning to parse and interpret these forms of law is comparable in importance and complexity to learning to read judicial opinions. This course will teach students these skills by reviewing the theory and practice of statutory interpretation. We will discuss the lawmaking processes that produce statutes and examine the tools that courts use to interpret them. In particular, we will concentrate on (1) the relationship between the text of a statute and its purpose, (2) common canons of construction, (3) the use of legislative history, and (4) relationships between statutes and other sources of law. Throughout the course, we will relate the practical discussions to theoretical issues, such as the quandary produced when plain text yields absurd results.