Courts cannot produce the precise schedules legislatures enact

Evidence

The change was, of course, not just a matter of taste. The courts had developed rules that were for the most part vague and general. The new statutes were precise and detailed. For example, in the Idaho statute (passed in 1917), a worker who lost his “great toe at the proximal joint” in a work accident would receive 55 percent of his average weekly wage (but not more than $12 a week) for fifteen weeks. It is exactly this kind of precision that goes beyond the traditional power of courts. At any rate, though an immense body of case law on workers’ compensation has accumulated in the last eighty years or so, the basic scheme operates in a routine and administrative way, under ground rules and schedules set up by the legislature. Even court cases on the subject use the statute as their starting point. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 456

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Courts cannot preserve congressional power that Congress fails to use — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2870; Courts lack legislature’s freedom to set narrow rules without precedent costs — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1054; Courts may revise common-law rules even where legislatures have failed to act — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2368

Broader Connections

• Courts may revise common-law rules even where legislatures have failed to act #qualifies (0.75) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2368