1

INTERPRETATION OF STATUTES PROJECT

THEORIES OF INTERPRETATION; THE COURTS DUTY TO GAUGE

LEGISLATIVE INTENT

Submitted To,

Ms. Roshni Thammaiah,

Assistant Professor,

CMR University, School of Legal Studies.

Submitted By

Nikhil Soman (17BBLB032)

3rd Year, 6th Semester,

CMR University, School of Legal Studies.

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INDEX

PARTICULARS PAGE
SERIAL NUMBER
NUMBER
1 INTRODUCTION 3

2 CHAPTER 2: PURPOVISM AND GAUGING LEGISLATIVE 6

SUPREMACY
3 CHAPTER 3: TEXTUALISM AND LEGISLATIVE INTENT 8

4 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 11

5 CHAPTER 5: REFERENCES 12
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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

I. INTRODUCTION

For years on end, Jurists have argued on the interpretation of the term “No vehicles allowed in
the park”1. Jurists have argued that this Statement, being as ambiguous as it is, refers to a
restriction of “any form of vehicles” into the park. However, does this mean to include cycles
and baby strollers? Or does this prevent the city from bringing a war tanker to memorialize the
park? This issue has led to several deliberations on the method of interpreting certain aspects not
particularly defined; following Derrida’s philosophy on language, there is always another
method to interpret or to connect any word. This deceptively simple hypothetical has endured
because it usefully illustrates the challenges of statutory interpretation. Even a statutory
provision that at first appears unambiguous can engender significant difficulties when applied in
the real world. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once aptly described the problem of
determining statutory meaning as inherent in “the very nature of words.” The meaning of words
depends on the context in which they are used and might change over time. Words are “inexact
symbols” of meaning, and even in everyday communications, it is difficult to achieve one
definite meaning.

These "intrinsic difficulties of language"2 are uplifted in the formation of a law, which is created
by a confounded Governmental procedure and will probably be applied to an unforeseeable
assortment of conditions. Statutes are typically written in general terms, which may intensify the
trouble of applying a provision to explicit situations 3. However, this generality and the resulting
uncertainty is often deliberate: statutes are every now and again drafted to address "classes of
direct."4 The ordering legislature may have tried to guarantee that the resolution would be
sufficiently general to catch the circumstances it couldn't foresee, or may have proposed to
assign interpretive position to the Authority (Administrative or Judicial) answerable for
implementing the law. Obscure or uncertain language may likewise be the aftereffect of a
compromise. Or on the other hand a rule may be quiet as for a specific application on the

1
Frederick Schauer, A Critical Guide to Vehicles in the Park, 83 NYULR 1109, 1111-12 (2008).
2
Richard H. Fallon, Jr, The Meaning of Legal “Meaning” and Its Implications for Theories of Legal Interpretation,
82 U. CHILR 1235, 1260 (2015).
3
J. Clark Kelso & Charles D. Kelso, Statutory Interpretation: Four Theories in Disarray, 53 SMULR 81, 88 (2000).
4
William Baude & Stephen E. Sachs, The Law of Interpretation, 130 HLR 1079, 1116 (2017).
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grounds that the Government essentially would not have foreseen the circumstance 5. This is
where theories of Interpretation are referred to; theories which not only assist the Legislature
formulate laws but also the Judiciary to interpret the same 6. This article portrays these theories,
gives current instances of the theories as a single unit and contrary to each other, and closes with
general perceptions and evaluative proposals7. This Paper concludes that statutory interpretation
should be viewed by scholars as embedded within deeply ingrained methods of decision-making
which confounds efforts to impose a single theory of statutory interpretation upon the courts. A
set of ideas on statutory interpretation, worthy of being called a theory, should attempt to answer
at least these four questions about the process; firstly, what is its goal? Secondly, what evidence
is relevant? Thirdly, what is the hierarchy among rules of construction that are available for
dealing with relevant material? Fourthly, to what extent is an interpreter -free to use his or her
ideas of sound policy as a guide? Below are answers to each question as provided by the two
models of decision-making that at one time or another has been dominant in legal history8.

II. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following questions will be answered through the course of this paper:-

1. Whether the Courts are on an interpretative basis supposed to take Legislative intent as
final?
2. Whether, through the scope of the public good, the Judges are to gauge purpose over
text?
III. HYPOTHESIS

It can be derived that actual methods of statutory interpretation used by judges are more closely
aligned with a particular judge's overall approach to decision-making than with independent
theories of statutory interpretation can be tested by attempting to apply general theories of
judicial decision-making to decisions that judges make about statutes.

5
Bernard W. Bell, Legislative History Without Legislative Intent: The Public Justification Approach to Statutory
Interpretation, 60 OHIOSLR 1 (1999).
6
Jonathan T. Molot, Reexamining Marbury in the Administrative State: A Structural and Institutional Defense of
Judicial Power over Statutory Interpretation, 96 NWULR 1239, 1251-52 (2002).
7
John F. Manning, Without the Pretense of Legislative Intent, 130 HLR 2397, 2413, 2425 (2017).
8
J. Clark Kelso & Charles D. Kelso, Statutory Interpretation: Four Theories in Disarray, 53 SMULR 84, 85 (2000).
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IV. METHOD OF CITATION

The method of Citation for the paper follows the Bluebook Law Review 20 th Edition, Published
in 2015.

V. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research methodology can be defined as the process used to collect information and data for the
purpose of making business decisions. The methodology may include publication research,
interviews, surveys and other research techniques, and could include both present and historical
information. In the case of this paper, the sources of information include arguments put forward
by the author of this paper as well as several journals, books, articles, international agreements
and conventions.
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CHAPTER 2: PURPOSIVISM AND GUAGING LEGISLATIVE SUPREMACY

Purposivists contend that Legislations is a purposive demonstration, and judges should

understand statutes to execute that Legislative reason. Purposivists often center around the
legislative process, They contend that courts ought to decipher vague provisions such that is
dedicated to Parliaments' motivations9. Two overwhelming purposivists from the mid twentieth
century, Henry Hart and Albert Sacks10, upheld the generous assumption that the legislature is
comprised of sensible men seeking after sensible purposes sensibly. But there was an admonition
to this assumption: it ought not hold if the opposite is made undeniably to show up" in the
Provisions of the Statutes. Purposivists accept that judges can best observe the Legislature
supremacy by focusing on the legislative procedure 11. The American Constitution charges
Congress, the individuals' part of Representatives, with enacting laws, and in a like manner,
purposivists battle that courts should look to "how Congress really works. As such, they contend
that to save the uprightness of enactment, judges should focus on how Congress makes its
motivations known, through content and dependable going with materials establishing
Legislative history12. Courts should contemplate any institutional device that encourages bargain
and builds up the accord expected to pass significant enactments. Many purposivists contend that
when courts understand statutes in manners that regard what lawmakers think about their
product, the Judiciary in addition agree to the fact that more is probably going to arrive at the
right outcome, yet in addition advances comity with the Parliament To find what a sensible
administrator was attempting to accomplish, purposivists depend on the rule's "approach
setting,"13 searching for proof that goes to the way a sensible individual acquainted with the
circumstances surrounding the legislation would smother the evil and advance the cure."
Purposivists are more willing than textualists to think about Legislative history. However,
ostensibly, the center of purposivism is "reasoning by example" 14 and soliciting whether different
explicit applications from the rule further its broadly useful. Accordingly, purposivists keep up
9
Robert A. Katzmann, Judging Statutes 31 (2014).
10
Henry M. Hart, Jr. & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems In The Making And Application Of
Law 1182 (1958).
11
Jonathan T. Molot, Reexamining Marbury in the Administrative State: A Structural and Institutional Defense of
Judicial Power over Statutory Interpretation, 96 NWULR 1239, 1251-52 (2002).
12
Kimble v. Marvel Entm’t, 135 S. Ct. 2401, 2414 (2015).
13
William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dynamic Statutory Interpretation 58 (1994).
14
Jane S. Schacter, The Confounding Common Law Originalism in Recent Supreme Court Statutory Interpretation:
Implications for the Legislative History Debate and Beyond, 51 STANLR 1, 5 (1998).
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that courts should initially ask what issue the Parliament was attempting to tackle, and afterward
ask whether the proposed interpretation fits into that reason 15. Hart and Sacks recommended that
judges should look for to accomplish consistency of solutions to cause the outcomes in the
specific cases to react to some broad target or reason to be credited to the Legislation. Judges
should search for interpretations that advance lucidness and functionality. Detractors contend
that it is likely difficult to track down one shared aim behind some random bit of enactment, and
that it is wrong for judges to try to discover Legislative reason 16. Such Jurists guarantee that
judges are not well-prepared to see how complex Parliamentary procedures bear on the law at
last established by Congress not least on the grounds that the records of that procedure, as
Legislative history, are often inside opposing and in any case questionable. Rivals of
purposivism likewise now and again contend that the hypothesis is excessively effectively
manipulable, permitting the purposivists to disregard the content and accomplish what he accepts
to be the provision's motivation.

15
Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in Civil-Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in
Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A Matter Of Interpretation: Federal Courts And The Law, 3 (1997).
16
Daniel A. Farber & Philip P. Frickey, Symposium on the Theory of Public Choice: Legislative Intent and Public
Choice, 74 VALR 423 (1988).
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CHAPTER 3: TEXTUALSIM AND LEGISLATIVE INTENT

As opposed to purposivists, textualists center on the expressions of a statute, underscoring text

over any implicit reason17. Textualists contend courts should peruse the expressions of that
statutory content as any conventional Member of the Parliament would have understood them.
They search for the signifying "that a sensible individual would accumulate from the content of
the law, set nearby the rest of the corpus juris (the body of law.) Textualists care about statutory
reason to the degree that it is apparent from the content. As needs be, textualists take a gander at
the statutory structure and hear the words as they would sound in the psyche of a gifted,
dispassionately sensible client of words. Textualists accept that "judges best regard legislative
capability" when they adhere to decides that organize the statutory content. For textualists,
concentrating on the content alone and embracing the assumption that the Parliament 'signifies
what it says' empowers Parliament to draw its lines dependably without taking a chance with that
a court will treat a background error as a legislative mistake or oversight. As Judge Frank
Easterbrook expressed, Statutes are not practices in private language, however are open archives,
arranged and endorsed by numerous gatherings. Textualism centers around the expressions of a
statute since it is that message that endure these political procedures and was properly instituted
by Congress, practicing its protected capacity to Legislate 18. Textualists have contended that
concentrating on authentic however unexpressed legislative aim welcomes the peril that judges
will in truth seek after their own goals and wants and, appropriately, infringe into the legislative
capacity by making, instead of deciphering, statutory law 19. To find what a sensible English-
speaker would think a statute's book implies, textualists search for proof of the statute's
"semantic setting," looking for proof about the way a sensible individual familiar with significant
social and etymological practices would have utilized the words. Numerous textualists decrease
to utilize legislative history under most conditions 20. Rather, textualist judges for the most part
look to find "the mutual shows" that are innate in the statutory language, asking what
suppositions were shared by the speakers and the target group. As proof of these mutual
presumptions, textualists may go to rules of syntax, or to the purported standards of development
17
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Theory of Legal Interpretation, 12 HLR 417, 417-18 (1899).
18
Henry M. Hart & Alber M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law
(10th ed. 1958).
19
William Winslow Crosskey, Politics And The Constitution In The History Of The United States, 366-67 (1950).
20
John Hart Ely, On Discovering Fundamental Values, 92 HLR 5, 16 (1978).
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that reflect more extensive shows of language use, normal in the public arena everywhere at the
time the statute was authorized. 21 Jurists of textualism contend that the hypothesis is an
excessively formalistic way to deal with deciding the significance of statutory content that
overlooks the way that courts have been appointed interpretive authority under the Constitution 22.
Adversaries of textualism some of the time guarantee that Congress enacts with this foundation
understanding, anticipating that courts should focus on legislative procedures and the law's
motivation while applying it to explicit conditions. Subsequently, textualism's depreciators
contend that considering proof of a statute's motivation can be more compelling on a judge than
simply thinking about the content, separated from proof of legislative intent23.

The differentiations between these two hypotheses were shown in the American Supreme Court
instance of Arlington Central School District Board of Education v. Murphy 24. The case emerged
out of a suit wherein a student’s parents had effectively sued a school area under the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act. As significant to the case, that Act gave that "A Court 'May
Award Reasonable Attorneys' Fees as Part of The Costs' To Parents Who Prevail in an Action
Brought under the Act." The guardians looked to recuperate charges paid to a specialist in
training who had given help all through the procedure. The issue under the watchful eye of the
Court was whether the Act "approved the remuneration of master expenses." In a textualist
sentiment composed by Justice Alito, most of the Court inferred that the Act didn't approve the
pay of charges. Accentuating that courts must "start with the content" and "implement as
indicated by its terms," the Court expressed that the arrangement "accommodates an honor of
'sensible lawyers' expenses,'" without "implying" that the honor ought to likewise incorporate
master charges. The greater part supposition dismissed the guardians' contentions that granting
master expenses would be reliable with the statute's objectives and its legislative history, even
with the Act's unambiguous content. Paradoxically, Justice Breyer's disagreeing conclusion
typified a purposivist way to deal with deciphering the statute. He presumed that the contested
term "costs" ought to be deciphered "To Include the Award of Expert Fees" for two reasons:
First, that is the thing that Congress said it expected by the expression. Second, that
interpretation promotes the Act's statutorily characterized purposes. Equity Breyer depended on
21
Frederick Schauer, The Limited Domain of the Law, 90 VLR 1909, 1912 (2004).
22
Richard A. Posner, Legal Formalism, Legal Realism, and the Interpretation of Statutes and the Constitution, 37
CRLR 179, 181 (1987).
23
Frank E. Horack, Jr., In the Name of Legislative Intention, 38 WVAL.Q 119, 119 (1932).
24
548 U.S. 291 (2006).
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the bill's legislative history and the Act's essential reason to ensure that children with inabilities
get quality government funded training as essential proof of the statute's significance. He didn't
concur that the statute's content was unambiguous 25. Despite the fact that he noticed that an
exacting perusing of the arrangement would not approve the costs looked for by the guardians,
he inferred that this perusing was not unavoidable. Rather, he reasoned that his perusing, while
etymologically the less natural, is legislatively the more probable.

25
Patricia M. Wald, Some Observations on the Use of Legislative History in the 1981 Supreme Court Term, 68
IOWALR 195, 214 (1983).
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CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION

At this point of the discussion, it can be derived that actual methods of statutory interpretation
used by judges are more closely aligned with a particular judge's overall approach to decision-
making than with independent theories of statutory interpretation can be tested by attempting to
apply general theories of judicial decision-making to decisions that judges make about statutes. 26
If there is a match between general theories of judicial decision-making and judicial decisions
about statutes, it would suggest that decision-making is a more fundamental activity than
statutory interpretation, and that theories of statutory interpretation ultimately fail as a practical
matter because they conflict with more basic judicial characteristics. The law appears to be
roughly as follows: If statutory text is held to be unambiguous, and not unconstitutional, it will
be applied. However, ambiguity is readily perceived when suggested by any of a variety of
sources including other words in the Act, legislative history, the application of interpretive
canons, interpretations by an agency charged with administering the Act, and the Court's
conclusions about the purpose of the law and whether a particular interpretation would serve that
purpose.27

26
Nicholas S. Zeppos, The Use of Authority in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical Analysis, 70 TLR 1073, 1107
(1992).
27
J. Clark Kelso & Charles D. Kelso, Statutory Interpretation: Four Theories in Disarray, 53 SMULR 84, 85
(2000).
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REFERENCES

1. Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in Civil-Law System: The Role of United States
Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A Matter Of Interpretation:
Federal Courts And The Law, 3 (1997).
2. Bernard W. Bell, Legislative History Without Legislative Intent: The Public Justification
Approach to Statutory Interpretation, 60 OHIOSLR 1 (1999).
3. Daniel A. Farber & Philip P. Frickey, Symposium on the Theory of Public Choice:
Legislative Intent and Public Choice, 74 VALR 423 (1988).
4. Frank E. Horack, Jr., In the Name of Legislative Intention, 38 WVAL.Q 119, 119 (1932).
5. Frederick Schauer, A Critical Guide to Vehicles in the Park, 83 NYULR 1109, 1111-12
(2008).
6. Frederick Schauer, The Limited Domain of the Law, 90 VLR 1909, 1912 (2004).
7. Henry M. Hart & Alber M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and
Application of Law (10th ed. 1958).
8. Henry M. Hart, Jr. & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems In The
Making And Application Of Law 1182 (1958).
9. J. Clark Kelso & Charles D. Kelso, Statutory Interpretation: Four Theories in Disarray,
53 SMULR 81, 88 (2000).
10. Jane S. Schacter, The Confounding Common Law Originalism in Recent Supreme Court
Statutory Interpretation: Implications for the Legislative History Debate and Beyond, 51
STANLR 1, 5 (1998).
11. John F. Manning, Without the Pretense of Legislative Intent, 130 HLR 2397, 2413, 2425
(2017).
12. John Hart Ely, On Discovering Fundamental Values, 92 HLR 5, 16 (1978).
13. Jonathan T. Molot, Reexamining Marbury in the Administrative State: A Structural and
Institutional Defense of Judicial Power over Statutory Interpretation, 96 NWULR 1239,
1251-52 (2002).
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14. Jonathan T. Molot, Reexamining Marbury in the Administrative State: A Structural and
Institutional Defense of Judicial Power over Statutory Interpretation, 96 NWULR 1239,
1251-52 (2002).
15. Kimble v. Marvel Entm’t, 135 S. Ct. 2401, 2414 (2015).
16. Nicholas S. Zeppos, The Use of Authority in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical
Analysis, 70 TLR 1073, 1107 (1992).
17. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Theory of Legal Interpretation, 12 HLR 417, 417-18
(1899).
18. Patricia M. Wald, Some Observations on the Use of Legislative History in the 1981
Supreme Court Term, 68 IOWALR 195, 214 (1983).
19. Richard A. Posner, Legal Formalism, Legal Realism, and the Interpretation of Statutes
and the Constitution, 37 CRLR 179, 181 (1987).
20. Richard H. Fallon, Jr, The Meaning of Legal “Meaning” and Its Implications for
Theories of Legal Interpretation, 82 U. CHILR 1235, 1260 (2015).
21. Robert A. Katzmann, Judging Statutes 31 (2014).
22. William Baude & Stephen E. Sachs, The Law of Interpretation, 130 HLR 1079, 1116
(2017).
23. William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dynamic Statutory Interpretation 58 (1994).
24. William Winslow Crosskey, Politics And The Constitution In The History Of The United
States, 366-67 (1950).