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Early Understandings of the "Judicial Power" in Statutory Interpretation

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Early Understandings of the ARTICLE ALL ABOUT WORDS: EARLY UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE 'JUDICIAL POWER" IN STATUTORY INTERPRETATION, 1776-1806 William N. Eskridge, Jr.* What understandingof the 'judicial Power" would the Founders and their immediate successors possess in regard to statutory interpretation? In this Article, ProfessorEskridge explores the background understandingof the judiciary's role in the interpretationof legislative texts, and answers earlier work by scholars like ProfessorJohn Manning who have suggested that the separation of powers adopted in the U.S. Constitution mandate an interpre- tive methodology similar to today's textualism. Reviewing sources such as English precedents, early state court practices, ratifying debates, and the Marshall Court's practices, Eskridge demonstrates that while early statutory interpretationbegan with the words of the text, it by no means confined its searchfor meaning to the plain text. He concludes that the early practices, especially the methodology ofJohn Marshall,provide a powerful model, not of an anticipatory textualism, but rather of a sophisticated methodology that knit together text, context, purpose, and democratic and constitutionalnorms in the service of carrying out the judiciary's constitutional role. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................... 991 I. Three Nontextualist Powers Assumed by English Judges, 1500-1800 ............................................... 998 A. The Ameliorative Power .............................. 999 B. Suppletive Power (and More on the Ameliorative Pow er) .............................................. 1003 C. Voidance Power ..................................... 1005 II. Statutory Interpretation During the Founding Period, 1776-1791 ............................................... 1009 * John A. Garver Professor ofJurisprudence, Yale Law School. I am indebted toJohn Manning for sharing his thoughts about the founding and consolidating periods; although we interpret the materials differently, I have learned a lot from his research and arguments. I am grateful to Jim Chen, Stephen Choi, Dan Farber, John Langbein, Dan Kahan, Brett McDonnell, David McGowan, Miranda Oshige McGowan, Randy Schoette, John Yoo, and Kenji Yoshino (as well as various questioners at University of Minnesota and Yale Law School workshops) for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this Article. Martin Flaherty deserves special thanks, both for his comments on two earlier drafts of this Article, and for the elevated level of professionalism he has brought to legal history and its treatment of the founding period. Shemina Kanji, Yale Law School Class of 2002; Travis LeBlanc, Yale Law School Class of 2002; and Michael Shumsky, Yale Law School Class of 2003, provided excellent and needed research assistance. HeinOnline -- 101 Colum. L. Rev. 990 2001 2001] ALL ABOUT WORDS A. Suppletive Power .................................... 1018 B. Am eliorative Powers .................................. 1021 C. Voidance Power ..................................... 1025 III. Judicial Power and Statutory Interpretation at the Philadelphia Convention, 1787 ........................... 1030 IV. Statutory Interpretation and the Ratifying Debates, 1787-89 ................................................. 1040 V. Early Statutory Interpretation by Federal Judges, 1791-1806 ............................................... 1058 A. The Jay and Ellsworth Courts, 1789-1801 ............. 1060 B. The Early Marshall Court, 1801-07 ................... 1070 C. Provisional Conclusions About Early Federal Statutory D ecisions ............................................ 1082 VI. The Relevance of the Founding History to Statutory Interpretation Today? .................................... 1087 A. Original Intent about the Judicial Power in Statutory Interpretation? The Three Faces of Textualism ...... 1088 B. The Relationship Between Text and Context ......... 1096 C. Insights About the Canons of Statutory Construction and Recent Decisions ................................ 1099 Conclusion .......................................... 1105 INTRODUCTION Academic debates about statutory interpretation methodology have increasingly involved competing "faithful agent" versus "cooperative part- ner" understandings of the role of federal judges. The legal process un- derstanding of judges who are partners in the ongoing process of law- making has been challenged by scholars who maintain that the Constitution's separation of powers requires judges to be nothing more than faithful agents of the legislature in statutory interpretation cases.' While both schools of thought criticize methodologies that insist judges must implement the original legislative intent behind statutes, 2 they di- verge in cases where the facts of the case, the evolving statutory scheme, 1. Compare Henry M. Hart, Jr. & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process 1-4, 1374-80 (William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey eds., 1994) (1958) (arguing that law is purposive, and the role of courts is to carry forward the goals of particular laws and of the legal system as it evolves over time), with Frank H. Easterbrook, Text, History, and Structure in Statutory Interpretation, 17 Harv.J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 61, 63 (1994) (contrasting "faithful agents" with "independent principals"). 2. Compare William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dynamic Statutory Interpretation 10-11 (1994) [hereinafter Eskridge, Dynamic Interpretation] (showing that the courts actually follow nonoriginalist approaches to construing statutes and that often this practice is legitimate), with Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in a Civil Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A Matter of Interpretation 3, 16-18, 29-37 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1997) (arguing that attempting to discern legislative intent is an illegitimate goal in statutory interpretation and that "legislative history" is best ignored). HeinOnline -- 101 Colum. L. Rev. 991 2001 COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 101:990 and the legal landscape press statutory texts beyond what faithful agent theorists consider to be their "plain meanings." In my view, Article III judges interpreting statutes are both agents carrying out directives laid down by the legislature and partners in the enterprise of law elaboration, '3 for they (like the legislature) are ultimately agents of "We the People." I also dissent from the narrow view of statutes and the stingy understand- ing of plain meaning often followed by leading faithful agent jurists, like 4 Justice Scalia, who are also avatars of what I call the new textualism. My partnership-cum-agency model and a context-sensitive reading of statutory texts best reflect the Supreme Court's practice in statutory cases during the twentieth century.5 The new textualist judges seemingly con- cede this fact, for they fiercely criticize the Court's tendency to read stat- 6 utes beyond or against what they believe to be their plain meanings. Given the long-established practice of the Court, I have challenged the new textualists to provide a robust defense of their methodology, which would, if adopted, require a substantial change in the way the Supreme Court goes about interpreting statutes. One of my challenges has been for the new textualists to justify their methodology by reference to the original understanding of Article III's 'judicial Power," which strikes me 7 as friendlier to a pragmatic rather than strictly textualist methodology. Professor John Manning is the new textualism's main defender-and an impressive one. His important article in this Review usefully situates his- 3. U.S. Const. pmbl.; see William N. Eskridge, Jr., Spinning Legislative Supremacy, 78 Geo. L.J. 319, 322-30 (1989). Moreover, in the modern state, the primary agents of the legislature are administrative bodies. See Edward L. Rubin, Law and Legislation in the Administrative State, 89 Colum. L. Rev. 369, 372-74 (1989). 4. William N. Eskridge, Jr., The New Textualism, 37 UCLA L. Rev. 621, 624 (1990) [hereinafter Eskridge, New Textualism]. The theoretical debate is beclouded by the general alignment of the players: Those associated with conservative causes, like Justice Scalia and Judge Easterbrook, are leading theorists of the new textualism, while political moderates, like Justice Stevens and Judge Posner, are leading context-based, pragmatic theorists. The former group tends to read the same statutory texts more stingily than the latter group. Interestingly, although judges with different methodological commitments diverge in their interpretations, academics with different approaches, like John Manning (new textualist) and myself (agent-and-partnership), often read texts very similarly. See infra Part VI. 5. E.g., William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Statutory Interpretation as Practical Reasoning, 42 Stan. L. Rev. 321, 360 (1990) [hereinafter Eskridge & Frickey, Practical Reasoning]; Jane S. Schacter, The Confounding Common Law Originalism in Recent Supreme Court Statutory Interpretation: Implications for the Legislative History Debate and Beyond, 51 Stan. L. Rev. 1, 1 (1998); Peter L. Strauss, On Resegregating the Worlds of Statute and Common Law, 1994 Sup. Ct. Rev. 429, 436-47; Nicholas S. Zeppos, The Use of Authority in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical Analysis, 70 Tex. L. Rev. 1073, 1076 (1992). 6. See, e.g., Scalia, supra note 2, at 18-23. 7. William N. Eskridge, Jr., Textualism, the Unknown Ideal?, 96 Mich. L. Rev. 1509, 1522-32 (1998) [hereinafter Eskridge, Unknown
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