Twenty-five years of agency practice shaped how the Court read plain statutory meaning.

Evidence

The SWANCC Court’s conclusion that the plain meaning of “navigable waters” cannot extend to isolated, nonnavigable, intrastate waters not physically adjacent to waters satisfying what the Court described as the “classical understanding of that term” is not, standing alone, remarkable. To anyone approaching the question as a matter of first impression, the ruling might well seem logical, if not compelling. What made the Court’s ruling so unsettling to environmental law was that the legal issue before the Court was not a matter of first impression: the relevant federal agencies (and arguably Congress as well) had embraced a view broader than that “classical understanding” for more than twenty-five years. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 896

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Common-law judging habits now shape statutory interpretation too. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 117; Courts stretched ‘in course of employment’ statutes through interpretive flexibility — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3842

Broader Connections

• Common-law judging habits now shape statutory interpretation too. #expands (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 117
• Courts stretched ‘in course of employment’ statutes through interpretive flexibility #exemplifies (0.72) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3842