Statutory Default Rules: How to Interpret Unclear Legislation

This book provides a fresh approach to statutory interpretation by focusing on what judges should do when legal materials fail to resolve an interpretive question.

It challenges the common assumption that judges should exercise interstitial lawmaking power and instead argues that judges can and should use statutory default rules designed to maximize the satisfaction of enactable political preferences.

These default rules explain many recent high-profile cases, including the Guantánamo detainees case, the sentencing guidelines case, and the decision denying the FDA authority to regulate cigarettes.

The book rehabilitates the imaginative-reconstruction approach of Learned Hand and gives it new intellectual foundations, including a sophisticated appreciation of relevant social science.

This is an important contribution to the field, cogently written and well-organized.