Reading and Interpreting Statutes

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I. When reading a statute, consider “briefing” it.

Statutes or similar codified rules of law, like the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the Restatements of Law, should be analyzed when confronted.

Statutes are often broken down into sections and subsections. One subsection may contain several elements.

Break statutes down into readily understandable sections to see statutes’ different “tests,” components, and exceptions. A “brief” of a statute need not contain any particular section headings (as in a case brief); rather, it should track and organize the statute’s sections in an easy to understand way.

II. Methods of Statutory Interpretation

When called to interpret a provision in a statute, a court in the jurisdiction may have already interpreted that provision, and that interpretation is binding on lawyers. When no binding precedent applies, however, a lawyer can look to how courts in other jurisdictions have interpreted similar statutes. In addition, the following general methods apply to statutory interpretation.

1. Plain Meaning Rule: This approach provides that interpreters must “follow the letter of the law, that is, the words chosen by the legislature.”


2. Purpose Approach: The goal of this approach is to “ascertain and then give meaning to the legislative purpose in enacting the statute, that is, to respect legislative intent.” Other than by the language of the statute, legislative intent may be deduced by analyzing the statute’s purpose statement, its legislative history, its “legal context” (e.g., amendments), its public policy context, and its “paradigm case.” One variation of this approach is that when a statute aims to cure a defect in the law, any ambiguity is to be resolved to favor that aim.


3. Golden Rule: This approach instructs interpreters “not to honor the wording of a statute when it produces an absurd or unreasonable result, calls for an impossible outcome, or yields an unconstitutional result.”

III. Canons of Statutory Construction

1. Defined, common, and technical meaning: If words are defined in the statute, they carry that meaning for purposes of interpreting the statute. In other cases, one respects the context of words by interpreting words as carrying their everyday meaning or, when the context suggests it, their technical meaning. (A variation of this canon is the “literal rule,” which provides that words that are reasonably capable of only one meaning must carry that meaning whatever the result.)



2. “Of the same class” : General catch-all terms at the end of a list refer to items of the same class as the listed items. The catch-all term does not substantively expand the list beyond its class.



3. “Expression of one excludes others” : When the legislature included a list of terms but did not include a catch-all term or the specific term at issue, that term is excluded.



4. Specific prevails over general: When a conflict arises between a specific section and a general one, the specific one prevails.



5. Later prevails over earlier: Provisions enacted later prevail over those enacted earlier.



6. Effectiveness of all the words in a statute: All statutory language is intended to communicate some meaning. Therefore, language that could be interpreted as adding nothing should be construed as adding some meaning to the statute.



7. “Of the same matter” : When two or more statutes relate to the same matter, they must be construed together. Consistency is presumed. (In applying this canon, one might therefore carry the meaning of a word from one statute to the use of that word in a related one.)



8. Avoiding inconsistencies : A statute must be construed as a whole so that internal inconsistencies are avoided.