The Language of Statutes
eBook - PDF

The Language of Statutes

Laws and Their Interpretation

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Language of Statutes

Laws and Their Interpretation

About this book

Pulling the rug out from debates about interpretation, The Language of Statutes joins together learning from law, linguistics, and cognitive science to illuminate the fundamental issues and problems in this highly contested area. Here, Lawrence M. Solan argues that statutory interpretation is alive, well, and not in need of the major overhaul that many have suggested. Rather, he suggests, the majority of people understand their rights and obligations most of the time, with difficult cases occurring in circumstances that we can predict from understanding when our minds do not work in a lawlike way.

Solan explains that these cases arise because of the gap between our inability to write crisp yet flexible laws on one hand and the ways in which our cognitive and linguistic faculties are structured on the other. Making our lives easier and more efficient, we're predisposed to absorb new situations into categories we have previously formed—but in the legislative and judicial realms this can present major difficulties. Solan provides an excellent introduction to statutory interpretation, rejecting the extreme arguments that judges have either too much or too little leeway, and explaining how and why a certain number of interpretive problems are simply inevitable.

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Yes, you can access The Language of Statutes by Lawrence M. Solan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Law & Linguistics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Topic
Law
Subtopic
Linguistics
Index
Law

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Chapter 1: Laws and Judges
  4. Chapter 2: Why We Need to Interpret Statutes
  5. Chapter 3: Definitions, Ordinary Meaning, and Respect for the Legislature
  6. Chapter 4: The Intent of the Legislature
  7. Chapter 5: Stability, Dynamism, and Other Values
  8. Chapter 6: Who Should Interpret Statutes?
  9. Chapter 7: Jurors as Statutory Interpreter
  10. Chapter 8: Legislatures, Judges, and Statutory Interpretation
  11. Appendix: Two Mail Fraud Jury Instructions
  12. Notes
  13. List of Cases
  14. Index