Statutory Construction Zone

ABOUT THIS WEBLOG

Please note: Weblogs are also referred to as "blogs."

Why I Like Statutory Construction (And Why You Should, Too): First, because it is interesting. Statutory construction involves elements of several interesting subjects--linguistics, hermeneutics, political science, history, constitutional law, and rational decisionmaking theory--in a way that few areas of the law do. Second, because it is important. It cuts across all areas of legal practice. Statutory-construction issues are decisive in far more cases than constitutional law issues. And it is especially important in federal courts.

Inspiration: I got the idea to do a column with regular updates on federal statutory-construction cases from reading the "Circuit Split Roundup" in U.S. Law Week. I got the idea to do the column as a weblog after reading Tony Mauro's November 2002 article about Howard Bashman's "How Appealing" weblog.

Goals: The primary goals of this weblog are: to provide current, succinct, statutory-construction case summaries that will be helpful to practitioners and others; to show that there is a lot more to statutory construction than "plain meaning" vs. "intent"; and to disseminate trivia about the pre-1789 English common law.

My hope is that someone who wants to keep up with current federal statutory-construction case law (which statutes and regulations are being construed, which rules or arguments judges are accepting or using in construing them, etc.) would be able to do so by checking this web site for 5-10 minutes every week or two.

Coverage: Current coverage includes the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit, the Fourth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit.

Completeness: The general goal is to include all cases that have a significant discussion (i.e. more than a couple of sentences) of a statutory-construction issue. Please note: the coverage may be less thorough for Sentencing Guidelines cases (There are a lot of them, and often they tend to be somewhat sui generis. Someone might want to consider starting a weblog focusing solely on the Sentencing Guidelines). If you think that a case not included in the weblog should be included, or that the weblog is otherwise inaccurate or incomplete, please e-mail me at statutes@hotmail.com.

Datelines:"Dateline Integrity" (Howard Bashman's term) caveat: Due to the way that Blogger works, you should not presume that the date indicated at the beginning of the post accurately reflects the date and time that the information was actually posted.

Format: This weblog is organized into monthly segments. Segments contain the following:

--"Quotations of the Week"
--"Case Summaries" (some long, some short)
--"Law Review Article Recommendation"
--"English Common-Law Trivia Question" (names of people answering correctly will be posted on the weblog).

"Statutory Construction" vs. "Statutory Interpretation": For purposes of this weblog, it is presumed that "statutory construction" and "statutory interpretation" are interchangeable terms. The reader should note, however, that some authors draw a distinction between "statutory construction" and "statutory interpretation." The main reasons for preferring "statutory construction" over "statutory interpretation" for this weblog are: the play on words--statutory construction and construction zone--does not work if you use "statutory interpretation"; the U.S. Supreme Court, in its opinions in the past 10 years, has used "statutory construction" about 50% more frequently than "statutory interpretation"; and the title of the leading American treatise, Sutherland, is "Statutory Construction."

E-mail summaries: If you would like to receive the summaries by e-mail once a month, please e-mail me at statutes@hotmail.com and indicate that you would like to be on the e-mail distribution list.

Disclaimer: ANY VIEWS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE MINE AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO ANY OTHER PERSON OR ORGANIZATION.

E-mail address: statutes@hotmail.com

About the artist who drew the picture of the “Statutory Construction Zone”: John A. Lawson has drawn and painted for the last 30 years. His preferred avenue of expression is cubistic abstraction. Being the inveterate artist, however, he explores many different artistic expressions including illustration, portraiture, landscape, collage, and abstraction. His artistic talents are available. He recently retired from the U.S. Army after 25 years where he served as a Legal Administrator with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He now works in a similar capacity for the Regulations Rewrite Task Force at the Department of Veterans Affairs.