No statute can be interpreted without attributing purpose to it.

Evidence

An essential part of the context of every statute is its prpose. Every statute must be conclusively presumed to be a purposive act. The idea of a statute without an intelligible purpose is foreign to the idea of law and inadmissible. … Th meaning S a statute is never plain unless it fits with some intelligible purpose. Any judicial opinion of the kind of the two Whiteley opinions, which finds a Iplain meaning in a statute without consideration of its purpose, condemns itself on its face. The opinion is linguistically, nhilosophically, legally, and generally ignorant. It is deserving of nothing but contempt. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 880

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘plain meaning’ fallacy - an opinion finding plain meaning without considering purpose is self-condemning.
• XREF: Links to the interpretive method thread and the polyad’s emphasis on law/institutions and listening-to-context as method. — connects to: Contextual familiarity, not legal training, governs interpretive competence. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 894; Three presumptions govern how courts attribute purpose to statutes. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 884; A penal statute’s silence on a subject implies no legislative intent to regulate it — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1005 (+3 more)
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• A penal statute’s silence on a subject implies no legislative intent to regulate it #qualifies (0.80) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1005
• A statute’s purpose is qualified by the costs its legislature contemplated #corroborates (0.80) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1432
• Literal statutory interpretations are defeasible starting points #complicates (0.75) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 303
• Means cannot be judged apart from the ends that give them meaning. #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 136