Statutory Construction and the Coordinating Function of Plain Meaning

Scholarship

PUBLISHER

Supreme Court Review

DATE

1990

Frederick Schauer

Frederick Schauer, Statutory Construction and the Coordinating Function of Plain Meaning, 1990 Supreme Court Review 231-256 (1990).

Precedent and Similarity
Frederick Schauer

Barbara A. Spellman
Given that no two acts, events, situations, and legal cases are identical, precedential constraint necessarily involves determining which two... MORE
Is the Religious Liberty Tent Big Enough to Include the Religious Commitments of Jews?
Micah J. Schwartzman
One of the notable trends in the current Supreme Court’s religion jurisprudence is the shrinking of the establishment clause as the free exercise... MORE
The Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else
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In the age of fake news, trust and truth are hard to come by. Blatantly and shamelessly, public figures deceive us by abusing what sounds like... MORE

The Politics of Proportionality
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In this review of Jamal Greene’s How Rights Went Wrong, we raise a series of questions about proportionality review as a model for adjudicating... MORE
The Algorithmic Leviathan: Arbitrariness, Fairness, and Opportunity in Algorithmic Decision Making Systems
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This article examines the complaint that arbitrary algorithmic decisions wrong those whom they affect. It makes three contributions. First, it... MORE
Reason and Rhetoric in Edwards v. Vannoy
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Judicial reasoning and rhetoric should be mutually reinforcing, but they often end up at odds. Edwards v. Vannoy offers an unusually rich opportunity... MORE

Big Data and Compounding Injustice
Deborah Hellman
This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The... MORE
Social Science in Law: Cases and Materials
John T. Monahan

W. Laurens Walker
This title offers an engaging and comprehensive overview of how American courts use research and testimony from the social sciences in reaching their... MORE
Pragmatism, Logic and Law. By Kellogg, Frederick.
Charles Barzun
Professor Frederick Kellogg's recent book, Pragmatism, Logic and Law, is hard to describe. It lacks a clear over-arching argument or narrative... MORE

Statistical Evidence and the Problem of Specification
Frederick Schauer
As a number of modern sexual misconduct cases demonstrate, often there are multiple charges against a single individual under circumstances in which... MORE
Personal Responsibility in an Unjust World: A Reply to Eidelson
Deborah Hellman
In this reply to Benjamin Eidelson’s Patterned Inequality, Compounding Injustice and Algorithmic Prediction, I argue that moral unease about... MORE
Remedies and Respect: Rethinking the Role of Federal Judicial Relief
Rachel Bayefsky
Plaintiffs bringing civil lawsuits often express sentiments like “I just wanted the defendants to admit they were wrong” and “we’re worth something... MORE

The Common Law and Critical Theory
Charles Barzun
Because common-law doctrines have long served as targets for critical theorists, it would be easy to see the common law and critical theory as... MORE
The Role of Rules in the Law of Evidence
Frederick Schauer
The theoretical side of the law of evidence has long been dominated, at least since Jeremy Bentham, by debates between the so-called free proof... MORE
Constructing Interpretation
Frederick Schauer
This paper, a substantially revised version of a paper previously entitled (and posted as) “A Critical Examination of the Distinction between... MORE

Quentin Skinner v. Charles Taylor: Explanation and Practical Reasoning in History, Philosophy, and Law
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One can ask two different questions about a given social, political, or legal practice. First, how, if at all, do the ideas embodied in that practice... MORE
The Tale of Two Harts; A Schlegelian Dialectic
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This essay, written for a symposium honoring John Henry Schlegel, is part intellectual history, part philosophical polemic. It first briefly compares... MORE
Clash of the Titans: Hercules v. Dennis Martinez, or Why Dworkin and Fish are Both Wrong
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At first blush, the debate between Stanley Fish and Ronald Dworkin that took place over the course of the 1980s and early 90s seems to have produced... MORE