Dynamic Statutory Interpretation and the Institutional Turn
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Adrian Vermeule
Interpretive theory since the early 1990s has taken an institutional turn, putting into play new consequentialist and functional justifications for formalist interpretive practices. William Eskridge's argument (in Dynamic Statutory Interpretation) successfully refuted conceptual or formalist justifications for formalist interpretive practices, and thereby cleared away distracting intellectual underbrush. But the argument doesn't refute or even address the possibility, opened up by the institutional turn, that formalist interpretive practices might be justified anew on functional and consequentialist grounds. Those new justifications depend upon largely empirical answers to various institutional-choice questions about the allocation of interpretive authority between courts and agencies, and to various institutional-design questions about the relative costs of formalist interpretive strategies and their antiformalist competitors.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Attention to Context in Statutory Interpretation: Applying the Lessons of Dynamic Statutory Interpretation to Omnibus Legislation
- Dynamic Statutory Interpretation in the Administrative State
- Dynamic Statutory Interpretation and the Institutional Turn
- Justifying Dynamism
- Accounting for Accountability in Dynamic Statutory Interpretation and Beyond
- The Location and Limits of Dynamic Statutory Interpretation in Modern Judicial Reasoning
- The Dynamic Judicial Opinion
- Should Criminal Statutes Be Interpreted Dynamically?
- Agency Statutory Interpretation
- Statutory Interpretation as Diplomacy
- Earthquakes and Tremors in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical Study of the Dynamics of Interpretation
- Hypnotized by Images of the Past: Dynamic Interpretation and the Flawed Majoritarianism of Statutory Law
- Dynamic Statutory Drafting: Calculating the Price of Legislative Imprecision
- Dynamic Interpretation: The Art of Persuasion
- Textualism's Exceptions
- The Dynamic Theorization of Statutory Interpretation
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Attention to Context in Statutory Interpretation: Applying the Lessons of Dynamic Statutory Interpretation to Omnibus Legislation
- Dynamic Statutory Interpretation in the Administrative State
- Dynamic Statutory Interpretation and the Institutional Turn
- Justifying Dynamism
- Accounting for Accountability in Dynamic Statutory Interpretation and Beyond
- The Location and Limits of Dynamic Statutory Interpretation in Modern Judicial Reasoning
- The Dynamic Judicial Opinion
- Should Criminal Statutes Be Interpreted Dynamically?
- Agency Statutory Interpretation
- Statutory Interpretation as Diplomacy
- Earthquakes and Tremors in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical Study of the Dynamics of Interpretation
- Hypnotized by Images of the Past: Dynamic Interpretation and the Flawed Majoritarianism of Statutory Law
- Dynamic Statutory Drafting: Calculating the Price of Legislative Imprecision
- Dynamic Interpretation: The Art of Persuasion
- Textualism's Exceptions
- The Dynamic Theorization of Statutory Interpretation
