Courses

    In the first year curriculum, you are taught to “think like a lawyer.” Because of the predominance of common-law subjects in your first year (such as contracts, torts and property), this means you are taught to think like a “common-law lawyer.” And you are being taught to think this way at the same time that you are also trying to learn the doctrine in those particular areas.

In your second and third years, you will continue to learn to think like a lawyer, but this time, like a “statutory lawyer.” The focus on statutory courses in the upper curriculum makes sense. In real-life legal practice, you will deal much more with statutes and regulations than you will deal with common law -- no matter what area of law you practice in. But in these courses, you will again be focusing on learning the doctrinal substance of the particular area of law, rather than learning the technique of statutory and regulatory interpretation generally

This course is about process and technique and is probably the best ground-level course you will take. You will not learn the doctrine of any specific type of law in this class. You will learn the process of how to approach a piece of statutory text, how to diagnose the interpretive problem in the text, and how to answer that problem. You will practice the observant reading of text; you will get a framework for breaking down and thinking about a legal question in any case; and you will practice deploying interpretive tools to answer a question in the way that best “zealously advocates” for your client. This course will prepare you for a first summer of legal work, as well as for upper-level courses that rely extensively on statutory law (such as tax, securities, environmental law, labor law, copyright law, etc.)

The course has three overall goals:

1) Provide you with an understanding of the power relationships between legislatures, courts, and agencies. The course will include some basic information on how legislation and regulations get created and on the ways in which power is shared in the “making of law” in this country between legislatures, agencies and courts.

2) Teach you the toolkit of statutory interpretation so you can diagnose any interpretation question and bring the right tools to bear on answering that question. The guts of this course will lie in learning the toolkit of statutory interpretation, including Text; Canons; Purpose; and Deference to Agencies. By unpacking and analyzing the tools used by courts in various decisions, you will learn how to wield these tools yourself in order to reach different results. For example, you will learn how to use Purpose to deal with what appears to be plain Text or how to use the plain meaning of Text to challenge what appears to be a contrary, clear Purpose.

3) Expose you to the theoretical debates around statutory interpretation. The tools that a judge chooses to use from the statutory interpretation toolkit will depend on the judge’s theoretical position on statutory interpretation. A textualist judge will use the tools of Text, Canons, and Deference to Agencies, but rarely the tools of Purpose. Legal process judges will use all of the above tools, as well as the range of Purpose tools. Starting with materials that will frame the theoretical debate early in the semester, you will return periodically to questions about statutory interpretation theory as you become more proficient in the toolkit.