Revisiting the revival of theory in statutory interpretation: A lecture in honor of Irving Younger

Minnesota Law Review

Volumn 84, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 199-222

  Frickey, Philip P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

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EID: 0348080790     PISSN: 00265535     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. Jon R. Waltz, Irving Younger, 73 MINN. L. REV. 819, 820 (1989).
2. Louise Weinberg, Irving Younger, 73 MINN. L. REV. 823, 824 (1989).
3. 304 U.S. 64 (1938).
4. Philip P. Frickey, From the Big Sleep to the Big Heat: The Revival of Theory in Statutory Interpretation, 77 MINN. L. REV. 241 (1992).
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Politics, in 3 THE EARLY LECTURES OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON 238, 238 (Robert E. Spiller & Wallace E. Williams eds., 1972).
6. Id. at 238-39.
7. Id. at 239.
8. Robert Weisberg, The Calabresian Judicial Artist: Statutes and the New Legal Process, 35 STAN. L. REV. 213, 213 (1983) (footnote omitted).
9. Commissioner v. Engle, 464 U.S. 206, 214 (1984).
10. In fact, though, the thorough practitioner could find cases purporting to stick with plain statutory textual meaning and other cases that relied upon the "spirit" or purpose of the statute. See Frickey, supra note 4, at 243.
11. See, e.g., Max Radin, Statutory Interpretation, 43 HARV. L. REV. 863, 869-73 (1930).
12. See Frickey, supra note 4, at 244-56.
13. GUIDO CALABRESI, A COMMON LAW FOR THE AGE OF STATUTES (1982).
14. See Frickey, supra note 4, at 250-52.
15. See id. at 252-54.
16. See id. at 254-56.
17. The book was published as WILLIAM N. ESKRIDGE, JR. & PHILIP P. FRICKEY, CASES AND MATERIALS ON LEGISLATION: STATUTES AND THE CREATION OF PUBLIC POLICY (1988). We produced a second edition in 1995.
18. See WILLIAM N. ESKRIDGE, JR. & PHILIP P. FRICKEY, CASES AND MATERIALS ON LEGISLATION: STATUTES AND THE CREATION OF PUBLIC POLICY (2d ed. 1995). Elizabeth Garrett has joined us in beginning work on a third edition.
19. See Frickey, supra note 4, at 254-56.
20. See id.
21. See William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dynamic Statutory Interpretation, 135 U. PA. L. REV. 1479 (1987).
22. See William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Statutory Interpretation as Practical Reasoning, 42 STAN. L. REV. 321 (1990).
23. See id. at 345-62.
24. See id. at 362-84.
25. William N. Eskridge, Jr., The New Textualism, 37 UCLA L. REV. 621, 623 (1990).
26. See Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in a Civil Law System: The Role of the United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION: FEDERAL COURTS AND THE LAW xii, 3 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1997).
27. See id. at 9-14.
28. See id. at 16-18.
29. See Thomas W. Merrill, Textualism and the Future of the Chevron Doctrine, 72 WASH. U. L.Q. 351, 355-57 (1994).
30. See Note, Looking It Up: Dictionaries and Statutory Interpretation, 107 HARV. L. REV. 1437, 1438 (1994).
31. See Merrill, supra note 28, at 365.
32. See, e.g., Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26, 28 n.† (1998) (noting that Justice Scalia joins in the entire opinion with the exception of a section that discusses and rejects a party's appeal to legislative history); Associates Commercial Corp. v. Rash, 520 U.S. 953, 955 n.† (1997) (noting that Justice Scalia joins in the entire opinion with the exception of a footnote which discusses and rejects the use of legislative history in construing the statute at issue); Bank One Chicago, N.A. v. Midwest Bank & Trust Co., 516 U.S. 264, 279 (1996) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (rejecting the portion of the majority opinion that discusses the legislative history of the statute at issue).
33. Respect for the canons had been in decline since Karl Llewellyn's famous essay suggested that for every canon there was a counter-canon. See Karl N. Llewellyn, Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules or Canons About How Statutes Are to Be Construed, 3 VAND. L. REV. 395 (1950).
34. About the time that Scalia lent support to canonical methodology, several scholars were suggesting various theories under which the canons play a legitimate role in statutory interpretation. See William N. Eskridge, Jr., Public Values in Statutory Interpretation, 137 U. PA. L. REV. 1007, 1011 (1989) (observing that canons may represent "public values" drawn from the Constitution, statutes, and common law);
35. Geoffrey P. Miller, Pragmatics and the Maxims of Interpretation, 1990 WIS. L. REV. 1179, 1183, 1191-225 (discussing how textual canons may be consistent with philosophical linguistics);
36. David L. Shapiro, Continuity and Change in Statutory Interpretation, 67 N.Y.U. L. REV. 921, 927-41 (1992) (arguing that canons promote legal stability);
37. Cass R. Sunstein, Interpreting Statutes in the Regulatory State, 103 HARV. L. REV. 405, 462-503 (1989) (arguing that canons should provide principles for interpreting statutes in post-New Deal regulatory circumstances).
38. For a list of the canons used by the current Supreme Court, see William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, The Supreme Court 1993 Term - Foreword: Law as Equilibrium, 108 HARV. L. REV. 26, 97-108 (1994).
39. Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 404 (1991) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
40. See William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Quasi-Constitutional Law: Clear Statement Rules as Constitutional Lawmaking, 45 VAND. L. REV. 593, 611-29 (1992).
41. Scalia, supra note 25, at 28.
42. Id.
43. See William N. Eskridge, Jr., Textualism, The Unknown Ideal?, 96 MICH. L. REV. 1509, 1512 n.9, 1542-47 (1998).
44. 511 U.S. 531 (1994). Other commentators have also subjected this opinion to withering critique. See, e.g., Edward S. Adams & Daniel A. Farber, Beyond the Formalism Debate: Expert Reasoning, Fuzzy Logic, and Complex Statutes, VAND. L. REV. (forthcoming Oct. 1999); Eskridge, supra note 37, at 1543-46, 1548, 1550, 1553.
45. See 11 U.S.C. § 548 (1994).
46. Id. § 548(a)(2)(A).
47. See BFP v. Imperial Sav. & Loan (In re BFP), 974 F.2d 1144, 1148-49 (9th Cir. 1992), aff'd sub nom. BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp., 511 U.S. 531 (1994).
48. See id.
49. Id. at 1148.
50. See id.
51. Id.
52. See id. at 1148-49.
53. Id.
54. See BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp., 511 U.S. 531 (1994).
55. See id. at 549-55 (Souter, J., joined by Blackmun, Stevens & Ginsburg, JJ., dissenting).
56. 11 U.S.C. § 548(a)(2)(A) (1994).
57. See supra notes 42-45 and accompanying text.
58. Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 404 (1991) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (emphasis added).
59. See, e.g., Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470, 485 (1917).
60. See supra notes 33, 52 and accompanying text.
61. 501 U.S. 452, 460-61 (1991).
62. See BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp., 511 U.S. 531, 554 & n.8 (1994).
63. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-17 (1994).
64. See id. § 2000e-2.
65. Id. § 2000e-3(a).
66. 70 F.3d 325 (4th Cir. 1995) (en banc), rev'd, 519 U.S. 337 (1997).
67. See id. at 329-30.
68. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(f).
69. Robinson, 70 F.3d at 330.
70. See id. at 331-32.
71. Id. at 332.
72. Id. (citing Connecticut Nat'l Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 254 (1992)).
73. Id. (emphasis added).
74. See Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337 (1997).
75. See id. at 340-45.
76. Id. at 342 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(f) (1994)).
77. Id. (emphases in original).
78. See id. at 343.
79. Id. at 346.
80. 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) (1994).
81. See Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223 (1993).
82. Id. at 229.
83. Id. at 241-43 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
84. See Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137 (1995).
85. See id. at 142-50.
86. See Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125 (1998).
87. 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) (1994).
88. See Muscarello, 524 U.S. at 127-32.
89. Id. at 140 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., Scalia & Souter, JJ., dissenting).
90. Id. at 145 (quoting United States v. Foster, 133 F.3d 704, 707 (9th Cir. 1998) (en banc), vacated, 119 S. Ct. 32 (1998) (mem.)).
91. See id. at 143.
92. See id. at 143-44.
93. See id. at 144.
94. Id. at 144 n.6 (omissions in original) (relying on an internet web site). She also quoted Charles Bronson's character in the film The Magnificent Seven in the same footnote. See id.
95. The majority and dissenting opinions in Muscarello provide excellent examples of the manipulability of this canon. For the majority, Justice Breyer articulated an exceedingly narrow rule of lenity that is triggered "only if, after seizing everything from which aid can be derived, . . . we can make no more than a guess as to what Congress intended." Id. at 138 (multiple quotation marks omitted) (quoting United States v. Wells, 519 U.S. 482, 499 (1997)).
96. Unsurprisingly, Justice Ginsburg's dissent asserted a more aggressive formulation of the rule of lenity, contending that "where text, structure, and history fail to establish that the Government's position is unambiguously correct - we apply the rule of lenity and resolve the ambiguity in [the defendant's] favor." Id. at 148 (alterations in original) (quoting United States v. Granderson, 511 U.S. 39, 54 (1994)). That both Justices could find such diverse quotations from precedent on the effect of the rule of lenity suggests that the Court has no consistent approach to resolving criminal liability under less than certain statutory provisions.
97. See generally Dan M. Kahan, Lenity and Federal Common Law Crimes, 1994 SUP. CT. REV. 345.
98. Here I borrow from my analysis in Philip P. Frickey, A Common Law for Our Age of Colonialism: The Judicial Divestiture of Indian Tribal Authority over Nonmembers, 109 YALE L.J. (forthcoming Oct. 1999).
99. See Memorandum from Justice Antonin Scalia to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (Apr. 4, 1990) (Duro v. Reina, No. 88-6546), in The Papers of Thurgood Marshall (reproduced from the collections of the Library of Congress, on file with author). I thank David Getches for a copy of this memorandum, which he discussed in David H. Getches, Conquering the Cultural Frontier: The New Subjectivism of the Supreme Court in Indian Law, 84 CAL. L. REV. 1573, 1575 (1996).
100. See Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676, 684-92 (1990).
101. Memorandum from Justice Antonin Scalia to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., supra note 91 (emphasis added).
102. Id.
103. See supra note 31 and accompanying text.
104. See Wisconsin Pub. Intervenor v. Mortier, 501 U.S. 597, 610 n.4 (1991) (positing that the Court's well-established practice of using legislative history in statutory construction "will . . . reach well into the future").
105. See WILLIAM N. ESKRIDGE, JR., DYNAMIC STATUTORY INTERPRETATION 199-204 (1994); Eskridge, supra note 37, at 1556-60.
106. See Frickey, supra note 90.
107. See, e.g., HENRY M. HART, JR. & ALBERT M. SACKS, THE LEGAL PROCESS: BASIC PROBLEMS IN THE MAKING AND APPLICATION OF LAW 102 (William N. Eskridge & Philip P. Frickey eds., 1994).
108. United States v. Marshall, 908 F.2d 1312, 1334-35 (7th Cir. 1990) (en banc) (Posner, J., dissenting) (emphasis added), aff'd sub nom. Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453 (1991).
109. See Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Divinity School Address, in 1 THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON 71, 72 (Alfred R. Ferguson et al. eds., 1971).
110. Id. at 85-86 (emphasis added).
111. Irving Younger, Let's Get Serious, A.B.A. J., May 1, 1987, at 110.