Many thanks to Will Baude, Pamela Bookman, Dan Epps, Barry Friedman, Mark Greenberg, Josia Klein, Anita Krishnakumar, Maggie Lemos, Marin Levy, Leah Litman, Michael Morley, Anne Joseph O’Connell, Larry Rosenthal, Steve Sachs, Joanna Schwartz, Dan Schweitzer, Mila Sohoni, and participants in the St. John’s Faculty Workshop and the Duke Law School Judicial Administration/Judicial Process Roundtable. I am also grateful to Caleb Peiffer and Taylor Pitz for excellent research assistance, and to the superb editors of The University of Chicago Law Review.
Legal practice is riddled with claims about when the law is or isn’t “clear.” If a statute is unclear or ambiguous, a court might defer to an agency, side in favor of lenity, or avoid interpretations that would render the statute unconstitutional.
Many thanks to Michelle Wilde Anderson, Will Baude, Josh Blackman, Sam Bray, Grace Bridwell, Craig Chosiad, Ryan Doerfler, Laura Donohue, Elliot Dorff, Greg Dubinsky, Kristen Eichensehr, Jonah Gelbach, Robert Goldstein, Mark Greenberg, Tara Leigh Grove, John McGinnis, Aaron Nielson, Jide Nzelibe, Jim Pfander, Alex Potapov, Sabeel Rahman, Larry Sager, Seana Shiffrin, Ganesh Sitaraman, Mila Sohoni, Sabine Tsuruda, Mark Tushnet, Margo Uhrman, David Waddilove, Eugene Volokh, Adam Winkler, Rebecca Zietlow, The University of Chicago Law Review, and participants in the Northwestern Constitutional Law Colloquium, the University of Pennsylvania Legislation Workshop, the Junior Scholars Federal Courts Workshop, and the UCLA School of Law Faculty Colloquium.
During the confirmation hearings for then-Judge John Roberts, Senator Richard Durbin asked about economic equality.
