Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 December 2020
Statutory interpretation is a problem that is of crucial importance for legal practice and theory, political discussions, ethical issues, and public information. A substantial majority of the US Supreme Court’s case load involves statutory construction, nearly two-thirds of its docket by one recent estimate, and in the years ahead, courts will be asked to construe the meaning of thousands of sections of legislation. However, as Katzmann (2014, 3–10) emphasized, the interpretation of legal texts affects not only daily rulings in the courts at all levels, but even what have become political issues vital to the legal system such as televised confirmation hearings for US Supreme Court nominees. Statutes affect all aspects of our daily lives, including the most pressing public policy issues at a given time. However, although ideally the language of the statute should be clear, the texts passed by legislative bodies, such as the US Congress, can be vague, ambiguous, structurally complex in expression, or even apparently logically inconsistent. Fundamental values of our societies, emerging in the controversies on the issues of freedom of speech, abortion, marriage, or self-defense, are primarily debated as matters of interpretation.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.