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84.2
Before Interpretation
Anya Bernstein
Associate Professor, SUNY Buffalo School of Law. JD, Yale Law School; PhD (Anthropology), The University of Chicago

I have benefited from the incisive commentary of Todd Aagaard, Christine Bartholomew, Barton Beebe, Guyora Binder, Michael Boucai, Michael Coenen, Nicholas Day, David Engel, Richard Fallon, James Gardner, Jessica Greenberg, Jerry Mashaw, Hiroshi Motomura, Anthony O’Rourke, Nicholas Parrillo, Justin Richland, Cristina Rodríguez, Glen Staszewski, and Tico Taussig-Rubbo, as well as presentation participants at SUNY Buffalo School of Law, the Academia Sinica Institutum Iurisprudentiae, and the 2016 Law and Society Association conference.

Interpretation requires an object: a text, an act, a concept, a something to be interpreted. An interpreter must pick out that object.

Judicial Decision-Making Statutory Interpretation Textualism
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Article
84.2
The (Not So) Plain Meaning Rule
William Baude
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

We appreciate helpful comments and criticisms from Larry Alexander, Samuel Bray, Eric Citron, Jonah Gelbach, Abbe Gluck, Richard McAdams, Sean Mirski, Eric Posner, Richard Re, Stephen Sachs, Adam Samaha, Frederick Schauer, Asher Steinberg, James Stern, David Strauss, Ilan Wurman, the participants in the Legislation Roundtable at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review. We also appreciate research support from the SNR Denton Fund and the Alumni Faculty Fund, and excellent research assistance from Kelly Holt.

Ryan D. Doerfler
Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Many tenets of statutory interpretation take a peculiar form. They allow consideration of outside information—legislative history, practical consequences, the statute’s title, etc.—but only if the statute’s text is unclear or ambiguous.

Judicial Decision-Making Statutory Interpretation Textualism
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Essay
84.1
Searching for the Common Law: The Quantitative Approach of the Restatement of Consumer Contracts
Oren Bar-Gill
William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School

For helpful comments and suggestions, we thank Lewis Kornhauser, Richard Revesz, participants in The University of Chicago Law Review’s symposium on “Developing Best Practices for Legal Analysis,” and participants in the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts project.

Omri Ben-Shahar
Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, The University of Chicago Law School
Florencia Marotta-Wurgle
Professor of Law, New York University School of Law

Introduction

Applying a precedent is the fundamental craft of a common-law judge. Judges do not go back to general principles to derive novel solutions to each case at hand, along with novel justifications and renewed persuasion efforts.

Best Practices Consumer Law Contract Law Empirical Analysis
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Essay
84.1
A Call for Developing a Field of Positive Legal Methodology
William Baude
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Adam S. Chilton
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Anup Malani
Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

Introduction

Best Practices