Search results

After decades of debate, the lines of distinction between textualism and purposivism have been carefully drawn with respect to the judicial task of statutory interpretation. Far less attention has been devoted to the question of how executive branch officials approach statutory interpretation. While scholars have contrasted agencies' interpretive practices from those of courts, they have not yet developed a theory of agency statutory interpretation. This Article develops a purposivist theory of agency statutory interpretation on the ground that regulatory statutes oblige agencies to implement the statutes they administer in that manner. Regulatory statutes not only grant powers but also impose a duty on agencies to carry out those powers in accordance with the principles or purposes the statutes establish. To comply with that duty, agencies must develop a conception of the purposes that the statute requires them to pursue and select a course of action that best carries forward those purposes within the means permitted by the statute; in short, agencies must take a purposivist approach. Moreover, this Article argues that agencies' institutional capacities—a familiar constellation of expertise, indirect political accountability, and ability to vet proposals before adopting them—make them ideally suited to carry out the task of purposive interpretation. Understanding agency interpretation as purposive by statutory design has significant implications for long-standing debates. First, it suggests that the focus of judicial review should be on the agency's specification of the statute's purposes and chosen means to implement those purposes, questions that are not squarely addressed by the Chevron doctrine. Second, by providing an account of the character of the agency's statutory duties, this analysis helps to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate political and presidential influences on the agency. Finally, investigating the debate between purposivism and textualism beyond the courts exposes a renewed ...

After decades of debate, the lines of distinction between textualism and purposivism have been carefully drawn with respect to the judicial task of statutory interpretation. Far less attention has been devoted to the question of how executive branch officials approach statutory interpretation. While scholars have contrasted agencies' interpretive practices from those of courts, they have not yet developed a theory of agency statutory interpretation. This Article develops a purposivist theory of agency statutory interpretation on the ground that regulatory statutes oblige agencies to implement the statutes they administer in that manner. Regulatory statutes not only grant powers but also impose a duty on agencies to carry out those powers in accordance with the principles or purposes the statutes establish. To comply with that duty, agencies must develop a conception of the purposes that the statute requires them to pursue and select a course of action that best carries forward those purposes within the means permitted by the statute; in short, agencies must take a purposivist approach. Moreover, this Article argues that agencies' institutional capacities — a familiar constellation of expertise, indirect political accountability, and ability to vet proposals before adopting them — make them ideally suited to carry out the task of purposive interpretation. Understanding agency interpretation as purposive by statutory design has significant implications for long-standing debates. First, it suggests that the focus of judicial review should be on the agency's specification of the statute's purposes and chosen means to implement those purposes, questions that are not squarely addressed by the Chevron doctrine. Second, by providing an account of the character of the agency's statutory duties, this analysis helps to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate political and presidential influences on the agency. Finally, investigating the debate between purposivism and textualism beyond the courts exposes a ...

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us

In this writing, I apply a "decision theory" of statutory interpretation, elaborated recently in the Yale Law Journal, to Professor William Eskridge's illustrative case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon.[1] In the course of this application, I take issue with the conventional wisdom that purposivism, as a method of statutory interpretation, is inevitably a more virtuous model of statutory interpretation. First, I question whether we have a clear enough jurisprudential picture both of judicial discretion and legal as opposed to political normativity. Second, I argue that, under decision theory, Sweet Homeis a far easier case than either Justice Stevens's or Justice Scalia's opinions reveal. Finally, I critique both opinions for failing to rely on norms borrowed from Congress's actual decisions in the 1982 Endangered Species Act Amendments. The question then, is not "norms or not," but whose norms, Congress's or the courts', should apply. [1]. 515 U.S. 687, 688, 708, 714 (1995). Justice Stevens wrote for the Court, with Justice Scalia in vigorous dissent. Justice O'Connor concurred.