Legislative processes and products

Journal of Legal Education

Volumn 46, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 469-477

  Frickey, Philip P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

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EID: 75949092661     PISSN: 00222208     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. The Calabresian Judicial Artist: Statutes and the New Legal Process, 35 Stan. L. Rev. 213, 213 (1983) (footnote omitted).
2. For example, three new casebooks were published: William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy, 2d ed. (St. Paul, 1994; 1st ed. 1988);
3. Abner J. Mikva & Eric Lane, Legislative Process (Boston, 1995);
4. William D. Popkin, Materials on Legislation: Political Language and the Political Process (Westbury, 1993). In addition, one casebook that appeared in 1980 has entered its secondedition: Otto J. Hetzel et al., Legislative Law and Process: Cases and Materials, 2d ed. (Charlottesville, 1993). The topic has been the subject of countless commentaries as well.
5. See From the Big Sleep to the Big Heat: The Revival of Theory in Statutory Interpretation, 177 Minn. L. Rev. 241 (1992).
6. See, e.g., Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956);
7. David B. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York, 1951).
8. See, e.g., E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York, 1960).
9. On public choice theory, see, e.g., Dennis C. Mueller, Public Choice II (New York, 1989). Law teachers might profit from examining the literature on law and public choice.
10. See, e.g., Daniel A. Farber & Philip P. Frickey, Law and Public Choice: A Critical Introduction (Chicago, 1991);
11. Bruce Chapman, The Rational and the Reasonable: Social Choice Theory and Adjudication, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 41 (1994);
12. Einer R. Elhauge, Does Interest Group Theory Justify More Intensive Judicial Review? 101 Yale LJ. 31 (1991);
13. Bernard Grofman, Public Choice, Civic Republicanism, and American Politics: Perspectives of a "Reasonable Choice" Modeler. 71 Tex. L. Rev. 1541 (1993);
14. Richard H. Pildes & Elizabeth S. Anderson, Slinging Arrows at Democracy: Social Choice Theory, Value Pluralism, and Democratic Politics, 90 Colum. L. Rev. 2121 (1990);
15. Edward L. Rubin, Beyond Public Choice: Comprehensive Rationality in the Writing and Reading of Statutes, 66 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1 (1991);
16. Maxwell L. Stearns, The Misguided Renaissance of Social Choice, 103 Yale L. J. 1219 (1994).
17. See Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, 2d ed. (New York, 1963).
18. See, e.g., Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).
19. See, e.g., David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, 1974).
20. Civic republicanism argues, of course, that public officials as well as the rest of us should deliberate to promote the common good.
21. See, e.g., Symposium, The Republican Civic Tradition, 97 Yale L. J. 1493 (1988).
22. On ideology to promote the common good
23. See, e.g., Arthur Maass, Congress and the CommonGood (New York, 1983); on dynamics and fortuity in politics
24. See, e.g., John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston, 1984).
25. See, e.g., Symposium, Positive Political Theory and Public Law, 80 Geo. L. J. 457 (1992).
26. Although it is beyond the scope of this small project, a fuller examination of legislative institutional structures would include the developments in the past decade of judicial review of political gerrymandering
27. See Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U. S. 109 (1986), and the interpretation (and potential unconstitutionality) of the Voting Rights Act as it applies to reapportionment schemes that arguably do not maximize minority voting strength
28. See Miller v. Johnson, 115 S. C. 2475 (1995);
29. Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997 (1994);
30. Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874 (1994);
31. Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993);
32. Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986).
33. See, e.g., Henry M. Hart, Jr. & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, eds. William N. Eskridge. Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, 1111-15 (Westbury, 1994).
34. See, e.g., Caminetti v. United States, 242 U. S. 470 (1917).
35. See, e.g., Johnson v. Southern Pac. Co., 196 U. S. 1 (1904).
36. See, e.g., Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U. S. 457 (1892) :
37. See William N. Eskridge. Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Statutory Interpretation as Practical Reasoning, 42 Stan. L. Rev. 321 (1990) (positing a model for this pragmatic balancing);
38. Nicholas S. Zeppos, The Use of Authority in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical Analysis, 70 Tex. L. Rev. 1073 (1992) (documenting the empirical validity of this model).
39. See Statutes' Domains, 50 U. Chi. L. Rev. 533 (1983).
40. See, e.g.. Hart & Sacks, supra note 14, at 1116-69.
41. See Stephen F. Ross, Reaganist Realism Comes to Detroit, 1989 U. Ill. L. Rev. 399.
42. See William N. Eskridge, Jr., The New Textualism, 37 UCLA L. Rev. 621 (1990).
43. See Hirschey v. FERC, 777 F.2d 1, 7-8 (D. C. Cir. 1985) (Scalia. J., concurring).
44. For evidence that the current Court is much less likely to rely upon legislative history and much more likely to use dictionaries as an aid to interpretation
45. See Thomas W. Merrill, Textualism and the Future of the Chevron Doctrine, 72 Wash. U. L. Q. 351 (1994);
46. Note, Looking It Up: Dictionaries and Statutory Interpretation, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 1437 (1994).
47. For a list of the canons the Court has recently used
48. See William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, The Supreme Court, 1994 Term-Foreword: Law as Equilibrium, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 26, 97-108 (1994). For a thoughtful discussion of the canons
49. See David L. Shapiro, Continuity and Change in Statutory Interpretation, 67 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 921 (1992).
50. Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380, 404 (1991) (Scalia. J., dissenting).
51. See 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).
52. See William N. Eskridge,. Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Quasi-Constitutional Law: Clear Statement Rules as Constitutional Law-making, 45 Vand. L. Rev. 593 (1992).
53. For this brief discussion, consider three problems. The first is that the Court is creating new canons, and modifying old ones, all the time, undercutting predictability and certainty. For example, when the Court held that federal statutes shall be interpreted as abrogating the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in federal court
54. See Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234 (1985), or as invading core state governmental functions
55. See Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452 (1991), only if there is a clear and precise statement to that effect in statutory text, it was changing the law in unpredictable ways. Second, when the Court applies these canonical modifications to existing statutes, it retroactively changes the rules of the game on Congress. Illustratively, in circumstances in which, at the time of enactment, the statute would have been sufficient to invade state prerogatives and it is clear Congress intcnded to do so, this judicial behavior has a bait-and-switch quality to it.
56. See, e.g., Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U. S. 223 (1989) (clear-statement canon judicially adopted in 1985 means that statute enacted in 1975 not clear enough to effectuate abrogation of Eleventh Amendment). Third, the application of these canons has proved highly unpredictable.
57. Consider BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp. 511 U. S. 531 (1994), in which the majority opinion of Justice Scalia interpreted "reasonably equivalent value" of real estate, in the context of the federal bankruptcy code, to mean whatever price the property fetched at a foreclosure sale. To impeach apparent statutory meaning and reach this outcome, Justice Scalia first relied upon the fact that state foreclosure proceedings depend upon the finality of such sales. He then analogized to the canon recognized in Gregory and concluded that the federal bankruptcy provisions should be interpreted to avoid conflict with an essential state interest in unclouded land titles. This was a major expansion of the Gregory canon, which on its terms applied only to federal invasions of core state governmental functions akin to those concerned in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833 (1976), not to federal preemption of matters ordinarily within the state police power.
58. Justice Souter, in dissent, had the pleasure of complaining that Justice Scalia's interpretation of "reasonably equivalent value" was wildly inconsistent with literal meaning and was in violation of the textualist approach Justice Scalia himself has routinely trumpeted. Indeed, the unpredictability of the Gregory canon was evident from the start, for on the same day Gregory was decided the Court handed down Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U. S. 380 (1991), which applied the federal Voting Rights Act to the election of state judges without even mentioning the Gregory canon.
59. See William N. Eskridge. Jr., Public Values in Statutory Interpretation, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1007 (1989);
60. Cass R. Sunstein, Interpreting Statutes in the Regulatory State, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 405 (1989).
61. See I William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 63-92 (Oxford, 1765).
62. See Harper v. Virginia Dep't of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86, 105-06 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring).
63. See Eskridge & Frickey, supra note 25.
64. 511 U. S. 164 (1994).
65. See On Resegregating the Worlds of Statute and Common Law, 1994 Sup. Ct. Rev. 429.
66. For example, my colleagues Jim Chen, Bill Eskridge, and Dan Farber enlighten their courses on regulated industries and agricultural law (Chen), civil procedure (Eskridge, who teaches the Rules much like a code), and environmental law (Farber) with the perspective of general legislation theory and practice.
67. There has been a running debate about the value of teaching the legal process through a relatively comprehensive examination of one subject or by using problems or case studies that range across many areas.
68. Compare Hart & Sacks, supra note 14 (problems on many topics), with Carl A. Auerbach et al., The Legal Process: An Introduction to Decision-Making by Judicial, Executive, and Administrative Agencies (San Francisco, 1961) (one subject). A virtue of looking at one subject is that students can develop some expertise across topics; a vice is that the students assume that they are supposed to be learning workers' compensation, or whatever the topic is, rather than more general skills. These problems evaporate to a large extent in an upper-level statutory course, where of course the instructor is teaching the students analytical skills and subject-matter expertise simultaneously.