| 词汇 | Statutory Construction/Interpretation |
| 释义 | `1`Statutory Construction/Interpretation `2` "Legal Lexicon": STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION/INTERPRETATION - The various methods and tests used by the courts for determining the meaning of a law. As the Supreme Court has explained: "[I]n interpreting a statute a court should always turn to one cardinal canon before all others. . . .[C]ourts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there." Connecticut Nat'l Bank v. Germain, 112 S. Ct. 1146, 1149 (1992). Indeed, "[w]hen the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: `judicial inquiry is complete.' " Id. "Congress is presumed to act intentionally and purposely when it includes language in one section but omits it in another." Estate of Bell v. Commissioner, 928 F.2d 901, 904 (9th Cir. 1991). "The clear import of treaty language controls unless `application of the words of the treaty according to their obvious meaning effects a result inconsistent with the intent or expectations of its signatories.' " Sumitomo Shoji Amer., Inc. v. Avagliano, 457 U.S. 176, 180, (1982). It has been argued both that the meaning of section 9 is not clear and unambiguous and that to give section 9 its plain meaning would produce a patently absurd result in that it would frustrate the application of the principal operative provisions of the Rates Act. Our response is based, in part, upon Nugget Hydroelectric, where we were faced with a remarkably similar problem of statutory construction. We were forced to decide whether the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (Policies Act) preempted the state action doctrine with respect to gas and electric utilities. Id. One provision of the Policies Act provided that "[n]othing in this Act or in any amendment made by this Act affects . . . the applicability of the antitrust laws to any electric utility or gas utility." Id., quoting 16 U.S.C. S 2603(1). Nugget argued that the term "antitrust laws" referred only to statutory law and not to the common law state action doctrine. It also argued that the statute was ambiguous and that the legislative history revealed that Congress clearly intended the Policies Act to preempt the state action doctrine. Id. We held that the language of the statute was clear, that it precluded us from holding that Policies Act preempted the state action doctrine, and that it did not produce an absurd result. See id. Therefore, we refused to look any further than the face of the statute. Application of "broad purposes" of legislation at the expense of specific provisions ignores the complexity of the legislative problems Congress is called upon to address and the dynamics of legislative action. Congress may be unanimous in its intent to stamp out some vague social or economic evil; however, because its Members may differ sharply on the means for effectuating that intent, the final language of the legislation may reflect hard-fought compromises. Invocation of the "plain purpose" of legislation at the expense of the terms of the statute itself takes no account of the processes of compromise and, in the end, prevents the effectuation of congressional intent. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System v. Dimension Financial Corp., 474 U.S. 361, 373-74 (1986). The Supreme Court has set forth the general rule that "[w]here a particular Amendment `provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection' against a particular sort of government behavior, `that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of "substantive due process," must be the guide for analyzing these claims.'" Albright v. Oliver, 114 S. Ct. 807, 813 (1994) (plurality) (quoting Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989)). Go to Statutory Construction/Interpretation2 |
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