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Textualism
Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is based exclusively on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review (2001) . Definition The textualist will "look at the statutory structure and hear the words as they would sound in the mind of a skilled, objectively reasonable user of words." The textualist thus does not give weight to legislative history materials when attempting to ascertain the meaning of a text. Textualism is often erroneously conflated with originalism, and was advocated by United States Supreme Court Justices such as Hugo Black and Antonin Scalia; the latter staked out his claim in his 1997 Tanner Lecture: " tis the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Statutory Interpretation
Statutory interpretation is the process by which courts interpret and apply legislation. Some amount of interpretation is often necessary when a case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and a straightforward meaning, but in many cases, there is some ambiguity in the words of the statute that must be resolved by the judge. To find the meanings of statutes, judges use various tools and methods of statutory interpretation, including traditional canons of statutory interpretation, legislative history, and purpose. In common law jurisdictions, the judiciary may apply rules of statutory interpretation both to legislation enacted by the legislature and to delegated legislation such as administrative agency regulations. History Statutory interpretation first became significant in common law systems, of which historically England is the exemplar. In Roman and civil law, a statute (or code) guides the magistrate, but there is no judicial precedent. In Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Purposive Approach
The purposive approach (sometimes referred to as purposivism, purposive construction, purposive interpretation, or the modern principle in construction) is an approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation under which common law courts interpret an enactment (a statute, part of a statute, or a clause of a constitution) within the context of the law's purpose. Purposive interpretation is a derivation of mischief rule set in '' Heydon's Case'', and intended to replace the mischief rule, the plain meaning rule and the golden rule. Purposive interpretation is used when the courts use extraneous materials from the pre-enactment phase of legislation, including early drafts, hansards, committee reports, and white papers. Israeli jurist Aharon Barak views purposive interpretation as a legal construction that combines subjective and objective elements.Barak, Aharon. ''Purposive Interpretation In Law''. Princeton University Press (New Jersey), 2005, p. 88 Barak states that the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plain Meaning
The plain meaning rule, also known as the literal rule, is one of three rules of statutory construction traditionally applied by English courts. The other two are the "mischief rule" and the "golden rule". The plain meaning rule dictates that statutes are to be interpreted using the ordinary meaning of the language of the statute. In other words, a statute is to be read word for word and is to be interpreted according to the ordinary meaning of the language, unless a statute explicitly defines some of its terms otherwise or unless the result would be cruel or absurd. Ordinary words are given their ordinary meaning, technical terms are given their technical meaning, and local, cultural terms are recognized as applicable. The plain meaning rule is the mechanism that prevents courts from taking sides in legislative or political issues. Additionally, it is the mechanism that underlies textualism and, to a certain extent, originalism. Meaning To avoid ambiguity, legislatures oft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strict Constructionism
In the United States, strict constructionism is a particular Philosophy of law, legal philosophy of judicial interpretation that limits or restricts the powers of the federal government only to those ''expressly'', i.e., explicitly and clearly, granted to the government by the United States Constitution. While commonly confused with textualism or originalism, they are not the same, and in fact frequently contradict, as textualists like Antonin Scalia have noted. Different uses Strict meaning Strict construction requires a judge to apply the text only as it is ''expressly'' written, i.e., read Literal and figurative language, perfectly literally. This can contradict the commonly-understood meaning of a law. For example, consider a law that specifies "the use of a knife when committing a crime should be punished by ten years in prison." This would commonly be understood as prohibiting the use of a knife to threaten or injure another person. However, read purely literally, the law ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supreme Court Of The United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over State court (United States), state court cases that turn on questions of Constitution of the United States, U.S. constitutional or Law of the United States, federal law. It also has Original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States, original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." In 1803, the Court asserted itself the power of Judicial review in the United States, judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution via the landmark case ''Marbury v. Madison''. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia (March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor. Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey. A devout Catholic, he attended the Jesuit Xavier High School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. Scalia went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and spent six years at Jones Da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937 and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party and a devoted New Dealer, Black endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt in both the 1932 United States presidential election, 1932 and 1936 United States presidential election, 1936 presidential elections.Ball, Howard. ''Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior''. Oxford University Press. 1996. Before he became a senator, Black espoused anti-Catholic views and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. An article from the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' reported that he temporarily resigned from the Klan in 1925 to bolster his senatorial campaign, before quietly rejoining in 1926. In 1937, upon being appoin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plain Meaning Rule
The plain meaning rule, also known as the literal rule, is one of three rules of statutory construction traditionally applied by English courts. The other two are the " mischief rule" and the "golden rule". The plain meaning rule dictates that statutes are to be interpreted using the ordinary meaning of the language of the statute. In other words, a statute is to be read word for word and is to be interpreted according to the ordinary meaning of the language, unless a statute explicitly defines some of its terms otherwise or unless the result would be cruel or absurd. Ordinary words are given their ordinary meaning, technical terms are given their technical meaning, and local, cultural terms are recognized as applicable. The plain meaning rule is the mechanism that prevents courts from taking sides in legislative or political issues. Additionally, it is the mechanism that underlies textualism and, to a certain extent, originalism. Meaning To avoid ambiguity, legislatures o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative symbolic interactionism, event) are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentence (linguistics), sentences, propositions, speech acts, speech, or Conversation Analysis#Turn-taking organization, turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary' but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language use, not invented examples. Text linguistics is a closely related field. The essential difference between discourse analysis and text linguistics is that discourse analysis aims at revealing social psychology (sociology), socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure. Discourse analysis has been taken up in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intentionalism
Original intent is a theory in law concerning constitutional and statutory interpretation. It is frequently used as a synonym for originalism; while original intent is one theory in the originalist family, it has some salient differences which has led originalists from more predominant schools of thought such as original meaning to distinguish original intent as much as legal realists do. Approach Original intent maintains that in interpreting a text, a court should determine what the authors of the text were trying to achieve, and to give effect to what they ''intended'' the statute to accomplish, the actual ''text'' of the legislation notwithstanding. As in purposivism, tools such as legislative history are often used. One example of original intent is in Freeman v. Quicken Loans Inc., 012 The plaintiffs took out mortgage loans from Quicken Loans. In 2008 they sued Quicken Loans arguing that that respondent had violated Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) Secti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critics
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or government policy. Critical judgments, whether derived from critical thinking or not, weigh up a range of factors, including an assessment of the extent to which the item under review achieves its purpose and its creator's intention and a knowledge of its context. They may also include a positive or negative personal response. Characteristics of a good critic are articulateness, preferably having the ability to use language with a high level of appeal and skill. Sympathy, sensitivity and insight are also important. Form, style and medium are all considered by the critic. In architecture and food criticism, the item's function, value and cost may be added components. Critics are publicly accepted and, to a significant degree, followed because of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Law Review
The ''Columbia Law Review'' is a law review edited and published by students at Columbia Law School. The journal publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes. It was established in 1901 by Joseph E. Corrigan and John M. Woolsey, who served as the review's first editor-in-chief and secretary. The ''Columbia Law Review'' is one of four law reviews that publishes the ''Bluebook''. History The ''Columbia Law Review'' represents the school's third attempt at a student-run law periodical. In 1885, the ''Columbia Jurist'' was founded by a group of six students but ceased publication in 1887. Despite its short run, the ''Jurist'' is credited with partially inspiring the creation of the ''Harvard Law Review'', which began publication a short time later. The second journal, the ''Columbia Law Times'' was founded in 1887 and closed down in 1893 due to lack of revenue. Publication of the current ''Columbia Law Review'' began in 1901, making it the fifth oldest surviving law ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
