On The Methods Of American Modern Statutory Interpretation

Traditionally, common law is the primary source of American law. The movement away from common law and toward statutory law began in the late nineteenth century. After the Progressive era, the New Deal and the "rights revolution", statutes gain dominant position not only in quantity but also as the source of American law. One of results of this shift is the evolution of the methods of statutory interpretation, which has become a hot topic in both academic and judicial circles. From the late nineteenth century to the end of twentieth century, the theories of statutory interpretation went through early plain meaning approach to intentionalism and purposivism, and then to new textualism. Later, the methods of statutory interpretation constructed by scholars in the theoretical level were influenced by thoughts from pragmatism and hermeneutics greatly and the dynamic theory is the most important one among them.Plain meaning approach is mainly about the canon of plain meaning rule in American statutory interpretation, which holds that extrinsic aids should not be considered when the statutory language is plain. The canon had been very popular. Its formation is firstly related with its maintenance of interpretive values and secondly with the interaction among those factors of legislative competence, judicial role, dominant legal thoughts and the relationship between common law and statutes. The plain meaning rule is encountered with many difficult problems, including the plain meaning is hard to ascertain, context-free plain meaning doesn't exist, absurd result is too subjective, the process of judicial application is distorted and interpretive values asserted is hard to strengthen. Intentionalism is a rival of the plain meaning approach, which holds that the goal of interpretation is to seek and effectuate legislative intent. As a method of statutory interpretation, intentionalism is justified for its maintenance and promotion of the interpretative values, such as democracy, rule of law and separation of powers and underpinned by modern pragmatics. Intentionalism divines actual legislative intent through legislative history and fictional mental state by imaginative reconstruction. Intentionalism is susceptible to critical criticism on its goal, legitimacy and technologies. The consideration of legislative intent should not be developed into a foundational method in statutory interpretation and only a factor worthy of giving weight under the background of practical reasoning. For legislative intent as a mental state facing difficulties hard to resolve, it is necessary to substitute it with the conception of "purpose", which is general, objective and dynamic, so is the rising of modern purposivism interpretation. Purposivism is mainly put forward by Henry Hart and Albert Sacks who are known as leading persons of the Legal process school. This theory criticized the traditional meaning theory and intentionalism in statutory interpretation, emphasized statute's purpose's principal position and it's "attribution" by interpreter, required interpreter to make statute's meaning certain in a way that would carry out the purpose as possible as he can and exerted restrictions of conventional meaning and "established policy of clear statement" on interpreter. Purposivism is attractive because it allows interpreter to assume the task of updating and developing statutes, participating in the process of public policy production as a cooperator, but without making controversial value judgments and policy choices by the non-elected deciding courts. But new textualism is dissatisfied with the phenomena that extra-textual sources coming into interpretive process and the expansion of judicial discretion. New textualists refuse legislative histories strictly and find theoretical basis for this from the theory of public choice and constitutional formalism and legal formalism. New textualists believe that the goals of statutory interpretation were not seeking and effectuating legislative intent but ascertaining the ordinary meaning and realizing textual coherence. For these goals, the interpreter should put himself into the position of an ordinary English speaker, engage in context analysis, employ semantic tools of dictionary, grammar and interpretative canons and consider the structure and system of the whole statutes. Plain meaning approach, Intentionalis, purposivism and new tetualism are all "foundationalism" in statutory interpretation, which means a theory that identifies a single primary legitimate source of interpretation and adheres to the statutory meaning that source suggests. But dynamic method which is represented by William Eskridge insistes that statutory interpretation involves policy choice and judicial discretion to meet changing circumstance and interpretation should be responsive to current values. According to Dynamic theory, it is necessary to inquire textual considerations, historical considerations and evolutive considerations. Each of them is in our "web of beliefs" and each exercised an important gravitational pull in statutory cases. Dynamic theory are influenced greatly by those thoughts from pragmatism and hermeneutics.The evolution of modern methods of American statutory interpretation are influenced by many factors, common law tradition, especially the changing relationship between common law and statute and the mind-set of common law judges, is the most important one. On the whole, from foundationalism to practical reason is a major trend of the methodology of American statutory interpretation.