Prior interpretations can foreclose renewed inquiry into a statute’s basic purpose

Evidence

Once the obligation of reasonable consistency is accepted, the acceptance necessarily narrows the scope of the inquiry into basic purpose which otherwise would be called for - in the fashion which Dean Levi describes and which he thinks should be all but invariable. If the nunber of prior interpretations is large, questions of basic purpose may be foreclosed altogether, and the problem reduced to a question simply of the result which will fit best with whht has already been settled. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 3193

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth scattering: what if the earlier interpretations themselves were wrong — does settled precedent then entrench error irreversibly?
• XREF: connects to: A settled statutory interpretation binds later courts like law, not dictum. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 3173; 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