Legislative History Flashcards
Most courts interpreting a statute either will exclude or atleast basically ignore
affidavits or oral testimony from someone who was a member of the enacting legislature about what he or his collegues intended by the statute
Reasons to reject testimony from a legislator about what he or his colleagues intended by a statute
- recollection might be mistaken (could be combatted by testimony of another legislator)
- risks the same sort of unfairness that we associate with retroactive legislation
legislative history refers to
records and documents that were created within the legislature during the process by which the legislature enacted a statute, and that the legislature has made available to the public, but that are distinct from the statutory text that the legislature enacted
Order if importance of statutory interpretation tools
- plain text
- statutory context
- legislative history
- cannons
A textualist and legislative history
would not use legislative history
Types of legislative history (importance)
- confrence reports (gold standard)
- earlier versions of statute
- commitee reports
- floor debates/MOCS (sponser or member)
- Testimony
- post enactment
Problems with legislative history
- notice
- what judge thinks
- bypass bicameralism
- cost
- incorrect way to read legislative history
- collective body
Legislative History - Constitutional arguments
Textualists sometimes suggest that one can draw infrences about the proper method of interpreting statutes (or at least federal statutes) from
the constitution itself, and that the constitution affrimatively prohibits courts from treating legislative history as authorative
Legislative History - nonconstitutional arguments
for people who support legislative history, say it can be
a valuable source of information about enacting the legislatures intent
Legislative History - nonconstitutional arguments
argument for textualists, who disagree that legislative history is valuable to find intent
the concept of legislative intent it
1. incoherent (because collective entities like legislatures do not really have intentions) or
2. irrelevant (because interpreters should be seeking the “objective meaning” of the statute rather than the “subjective intent” of the legislatures who enacted it)
Scrivener’s Error
- where the face of the statute it is clear to the reader that a mistake of expression has been made
In such cases
- The objective import of such a statute is clear enough even though it does not coincide with the surface meaning of the passage the congress garbled, and courts can properly read the statute that congress enacted to mean what a non-garbled version plainly eould have meant.
Constitutional Arguments/legislatibe history
Textualists sometimes suggest that one can draw infrences about the proper method of interpreting statutes (or atleast federal statutes) from
the constitution itself, and that the constituition affirmatively prohibits cours from treating legislative history as authoritive.
nonconstitutional argument
Theoretical objections to the logic behind the use of legislative history:
- Some textualists argue that the concept of legislative intent is incoherent because
collective entities like legislatures fo not have intentions
Nonconstitutional argument
Theoretical objections to the logic behind the use of legislative history:
- Some textualists argue that the concept of legislative intent is irrelevant
statute rather than the “subjective intent” of the legislators who enacted it
Objective intent over subjective intent argument
should look for objective intent - the intent that a reasonable person would gather from the text of law
Legislative history may do more harm then good
- offends the goal of providing fair notice to the people
- narrow the gap between the interpreted meaning and the statutory meaning
- imposes more cost on the justice system
commitee reports v. floor debates
more likely to hear commitee reports then floor debates
Interactions between legislative history and the cannons
- are rivals
- legislaative history leaves less work for the cannons to do, narrows down the meaning
- typical judge is willing to apply both
Legislative history and rule of lenity
- one view, is that shouldnt use rule of lenity until after looking at the legislative history
- may be inappropriate to use legislative history in examining penal statutes
