Reading a statute’s specific procedure as exclusive prohibition is a contested interpretive choice

Evidence

If so, what warrant did the Court have for saying to them, in effect, “We are sorry, but if you wanted your silence to be treated as silence, you should have said so. Now that you have so carelessly failed to do this, we are going to apply our rule of inteqpretation which says that the specification in a time of national tranquility of one method of dealing with a strike-bound industry is a prohibition of the use of any other method even in a time of national peril.” — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2957

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the expression-unius / exclusio-alterius canon in a concrete, pointed formulation useful for the legal institutions course.
• XREF: connects to: Unconstitutional presidential acts can escape judicial review when Congress later ratifies them — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2839; President Truman sought to execute congressionally prescribed policy, disputing Black’s framing — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2934; Unsanctioned executive power, if it exists, knows no legal limits — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2863 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Plain-meaning interpretation itself presupposes a policy rule favoring literal reading #expands (0.80) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1989
• Literal statutory interpretations are defeasible starting points #qualifies (0.75) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 303
• The common law approach to statutory interpretation has many shades and variants, which license varying degrees of judicial freedom in interpretation; but a central or defining idea is that judges… #expands (0.75)