Legislation and Regulation

3 credits

This course will focus on statutory interpretation: the methods by which lawyers, courts, and agencies interpret the laws passed by Congress. We will see that courts apply a common set of tools to interpret statutes and thus debates about statutory interpretation are relevant to a wide range of practitioners. The class with discuss major theories of interpretation and how courts use them to resolve concrete cases. We will also discuss the legislative process (which informs how we view the act of interpretation) as well as how administrative agencies interact with statutes.