Legislative intent and statutory purpose are conceptually distinct and often conflated
Evidence
The debates about the permissibility (or necessity) of recourse to legislative intent when a statute is unclear should not be confused with arguments about the purpose of a statute. It is legislators (or their equivalents) who have intentions, but statutes can have purposes, and it is often possible to determine the purpose of a statute from the words of the statute themselves. Sometimes, of course, the statute will say what its purpose is, a phenomenon described (and praised) by Karl Llewellyn as a singing reason, his term for a statute that not only has a purpose but that also announces it loud and clear. — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 293
Categorization
- DEFINE: Introduces Llewellyn’s ‘singing reason’ and cleanly separates intent from purpose.
- XREF: connects to: Constitutional interpretation and constitutional discourse are distinct practices. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 767; Constitutional argument and constitutional discourse are distinct activities with different boundaries. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 409; The plain-meaning rule forced lawyers into dual-level arguments about statutory meaning. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1988 (+2 more)
Related
- Constitutional interpretation and constitutional discourse are distinct practices. (similarity 0.79)
- Courts should attribute purpose to statutes and interpret words to serve it (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Constitutional interpretation and constitutional discourse are distinct practices.
#exemplifies(0.70) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 767 - Constitutional argument and constitutional discourse are distinct activities with different boundaries.
#exemplifies(0.70) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 409