Courts decide statutory meaning where legislative intent is genuinely ambiguous

Evidence

The Supreme Court first tackled this question in 1976. In McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Company, two white men and a black man had stolen antifreeze from their employer, but the employer only fired the white men. They sued, but the trial court judge said they had no case: the Civil Rights Act, in that judge’s opinion, was only designed to protect the rights of racial minorities. The Supreme Court disagreed; Title VII protected members of all races. … In United Steelworkers v. Weber, a union had entered into a collective bargaining agreement with Kaiser Aluminum to reserve for blacks half of all new openings in craft-​training programs. A white worker complained. In a split decision, the Court upheld the plan and ruled that the Civil Rights Act did not forbid this arrangement. Affirmative action programs, at least those that met certain conditions, were an exception to the general rule against discrimination on the basis of race. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 490

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Courts follow canons of construction as guidelines, not binding rules — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 498; Three presumptions govern how courts attribute purpose to statutes. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 884; Courts can include new subjects under old statutes despite absent legislative intent — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1406 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Judges create law when forced to resolve statutory ambiguity. #expands (0.85) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 187
• Legislative intent and statutory purpose are conceptually distinct and often conflated #complicates (0.82) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 293