{"id":22848,"date":"2014-07-01T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=22848"},"modified":"2014-06-27T22:22:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-28T03:22:11","slug":"us-supreme-court-review-should-the-court-care-how-effective-a-statute-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2014\/07\/us-supreme-court-review-should-the-court-care-how-effective-a-statute-is\/","title":{"rendered":"US Supreme Court Review: Should the Court Care How Effective a Statute Is?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"US<\/a>(This is another post in our series, Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s 2013 Term<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n

In my previous post, I noted a number of the considerations that the Supreme Court emphasized in its criminal statutory interpretation cases from the past term. In this post, I will highlight one recurring point of controversy, that is, whether the Court should try to maximize the effectiveness of statutes in achieving their overarching purposes.<\/p>\n

Abramski<\/em>, the firearms purchase case, provides a good illustration. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Abramski had purchased a handgun for his uncle, falsely indicating on a form that he (Abramski) was the \u201cactual transferee\/buyer.\u201d A federal law criminalizes false statements \u201cwith respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale\u201d of a gun. Prosecuted under this law, Abramski argued that his false statement was not \u201cmaterial.\u201d Part of his claim was that federal gun control laws are unconcerned with straw purchases like his: as long as the person standing at the counter exchanging money for a firearm can do so legally, the law does not care whether the purchaser is acting on his own or someone else\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Justice Kagan, writing for a 5-4 majority, rejected this argument, observing that Abramski\u2019s position would undermine much of the federal gun-control regime:<\/p>\n

The overarching reason [for rejecting the argument] is that Abramski\u2019s reading would undermine\u2014indeed, for all important purposes,would virtually repeal\u2014the gun law\u2019s core provisions. As noted earlier, the statute establishes an elaborate system to verify a would-be gun purchaser\u2019s identity and check on his background. It also requires that the information so gathered go into a dealer\u2019s permanent records. The twin goals of this comprehensive scheme are to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others who should not have them, and to assist law enforcement authorities in investigating serious crimes. And no part of that scheme would work if the statute turned a blind eye to straw purchases\u2014if, in other words,the law addressed not the substance of a transaction, but only empty formalities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Justice Scalia, writing for the four dissenters, objected to the majority\u2019s basic approach to statutory interpretation:<\/p>\n

The majority contends, however, that the Gun Control Act\u2019s \u201cprincipal purpose\u201d of \u201ccurb[ing] crime by keeping firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them\u201d demands the conclusion that Abramski\u2019s uncle was the \u201cperson\u201d to whom the dealer \u201cs[old]\u201d the gun. But \u201cno law pursues its purpose at all costs,\u201d and the \u201ctextual limitations upon a law\u2019s scope\u201d are equally \u201ca part of its \u2018purpose.\u2019\u201d Rapanos v. United States<\/em>, 547 U. S. 715, 752 (2006) (plurality opinion). The majority\u2019s purpose-based arguments describe a statute Congress reasonably might have written, but not the statute it wrote.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

. . . The only thing which can justify [the majority’s] leap is the false imperative to make the statute as effective as possible, rather than as effective as the language indicates Congress desired.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

[P]erhaps Congress drew the line where it did [permitting straw purchases] because the Gun Control Act, like many contentious pieces of legislation, was a \u201ccompromise\u201d among \u201chighly interested parties attempting to pull the provisions in different directions.\u201d Barnhart v. Sigmon Coal Co<\/em>., 534 U. S. 438, 461 (2002); see Director, Office of Workers\u2019 Compensation Programs v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co<\/em>., 514 U. S. 122, 135\u2013136 (1995). Perhaps those whose votes were needed for passage of the statute wanted a lawful purchaser to be able to use an agent. A statute shaped by political tradeoffs in a controversial area may appear \u201cimperfect\u201d from some perspectives, but \u201cour ability to imagine ways of redesigning the statute to advance one of Congress\u2019 ends does not render it irrational.\u201d Preseault v. ICC<\/em>, 494 U. S. 1, 19 (1990). We must accept that Congress, balancing the conflicting demands of a divided citizenry, \u201c\u2018wrote the statute it wrote\u2019\u2014meaning, a statute going so far and no further.\u201d Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community<\/em>, 572 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 11).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kagan responded to Scalia in a footnote:<\/p>\n

We simply recognize that a court should not interpret each word in a statute with blinders on, refusing to look at the word\u2019s function within the broader statutory context. As we have previously put the point, a \u201cprovision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme . . . because only one of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law.\u201d United Sav. Assn. of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd<\/em>., 484 U. S. 365, 371 (1988).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This same debate over interpretive methodology echoed in other decisions from the past term. For instance, in Castleman<\/em>, the Court had to determine the scope of a federal prohibition on gun possession by anyone convicted of \u201ca misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.\u201d Writing for the majority, Justice Sotomayor reached beyond the particular circumstances of the case to decide broadly that a misdemeanor conviction for \u201coffensive touching\u201d in a domestic context would satisfy the statute and disqualify the toucher from possessing a firearm. Like Kagan in Abramski<\/em>, Sotomayor emphasized that this broad reading of the statute would make it more effective in achieving its overarching ends (here, preventing lethal domestic violence). For instance, Sotomayor observed that a narrower reading would have rendered the statute \u201cinoperative in many States at the time of its enactment.\u201d Once again, Scalia (here concurring) objected to this approach: \u201cthere is no interpretive principle to the effect that statutes must be given their broadest possible application.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was an interesting flipside to this recurring debate: the Justices sometimes found themselves concerned about the possibility that a statute might be too effective, especially if this meant federal intrusion into areas of law enforcement that have traditionally been left to the states. Most dramatically, in Bond<\/em>, the Court refused to interpret the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act so broadly as to permit federal prosecution of routine poisonings. (See my post here<\/a>.) Then, in Loughrin<\/em>, there was a similar concern that the government\u2019s broad reading of the federal bank fraud statute would convert much routine, low-level deceit into a federal offense. Although the Court upheld Loughrin\u2019s conviction, it also went out of its way to identify a limitation on the statute\u2019s scope that might mitigate the federalism difficulties highlighted by the defendant.<\/p>\n

The Bond<\/em> issues aside, the Court\u2019s recent decisions illustrate a divide among the Justices over the relevance of \u201cpurposive\u201d considerations in statutory interpretation \u2014 a divide that roughly corresponds to the liberal-conservative divide.<\/p>\n

Justice Scalia\u2019s opposition to purposive interpretation rests in part on a realism about the lawmaking process that is surely correct: there can be little doubt that many statutes are full of the sort of unprincipled compromises that are often necessary for a bill to become law. On the other hand, Scalia\u2019s textualism is probably no more realistic that Kagan\u2019s purposivism: much statutory language is surely drafted without attention to the nuances of semantics and grammar that textualists so love to explore. This is not to say that purposivism is superior to textualism, but merely that the contest between these two approaches must ultimately move beyond appeals to legislative intent.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Life Sentences Blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This is another post in our series, Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s 2013 Term.) In my previous post, I noted a number of the considerations that the Supreme Court emphasized in its criminal statutory interpretation cases from the past term. In this post, I will highlight one recurring point of controversy, that is, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,122,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-public","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}