Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Harvard University Press
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Misreading Law, Misreading Democracy
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2016
About this book
Victoria Nourse argues that lawyers must be educated on the basic procedures that define how Congress operates today. Lawmaking creates winners and losers. If lawyers and judges do not understand this, they may embrace the meanings of those who opposed legislation, turning legislative losers into judicial winners and standing democracy on its head.
Reviews
Professor Nourse has written a book of comprehensive, devastating criticism of how judges, including Supreme Court Justices, interpret (or pretend to interpret) congressional enactments. The canons of statutory construction, plain meaning, textualism, literalism, originalism—all these crutches fall, felled by her cannons.
-- Richard A. Posner, author of Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary
-- Richard A. Posner, author of Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary
Misreading Law, Misreading Democracy is important reading for anyone seriously interested in understanding statutes, and especially so for judges. Their ignorance of/indifference to Congress’s processes is an affront both to the means by which most law is created today, and to the democratic values implicit in its emergence from the actions of an elected body.
-- Peter L. Strauss, Columbia Law School
-- Peter L. Strauss, Columbia Law School
Nourse convinces that America’s judges, law professors, and lawyers know perilously little about the most important branch of government—the United States Congress—and spells out the consequences this gap in our collective knowledge have for governance. Helping to fill that gap, this accessible book takes on those who practice ‘petty textualism’ while offering an approach to statutory interpretation that is both more professionally satisfying and consistent with our representative democracy. Brava!
-- William N. Eskridge, Jr., Yale Law School
-- William N. Eskridge, Jr., Yale Law School
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Prologue: The Paradox of American Civic Illiteracy
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1. Congress Is Not a Court
14 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2. Statutory Interpretation Theories Misunderstand Congress
34 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3. A Legislative Decision Theory of Statutory Interpretation
64 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4. Petty Textualism, Canons, and Cognitive Bias
103 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5. What Is Legislative Intent? Evidence of Context
135 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6. The Constitutional Argument for Legislative Evidence
161 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Epilogue: Courts and Congress as Faithful Agents of Democracy
182 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
191 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Acknowledgments
247 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
249
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 26, 2016
eBook ISBN:
9780674974265
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
208
