In the next few weeks, statutory interpretation is going to be the talk of the town. President Trump’s emergency declaration, though it has all the trappings of a constitutional crisis and king-like assertions of power, is really nothing more than a nice little question about the meaning of statutes. Congress passed a statute that allows the President to declare a “national emergency.” Once the President makes that declaration, he can then invoke other statutes (also…

Review of Amy J. Griffin, Dethroning the Hierarchy of Authority, 97 Or. L. Rev. _______ (forthcoming) Legal analysis differs from other forms of analysis in (at least) one important respect: We have to deal with authority. The wall between “is” and “ought” can be insurmountable when you’re standing in front of a district court judge and she’s got a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that says you lose. Maybe the Supreme Court got it wrong.…

Back in February, the Supreme Court of Washington decided In re Arnold, which held that a Division of the Court of Appeals should not follow the decisions of the other Divisions as a matter of horizontal stare decisis. As I observed at the time, the Supreme Court’s distinction between inter-Division conflicts and intra-Division conflicts doesn’t find much basis in the law: The statute does not distinguish between inter-Division and intra-Division panels. So when the…

Let’s say you need a new chef’s knife. So you go to Bed, Bath & Beyond and head for the kitchen section. (That’s part of the “Beyond,” I guess.) In a fancy cutlery display you see a large selection of chef’s knives. But you don’t buy any of those. Instead, you walk right past the chef’s knives and over to the cheese knives. After perusing a bit, you buy this set: That’s a nice…

So there I was on Sunday evening, October 7. A glass of scotch in hand, all ready to fill out the official Bluebook questionnaire, which would allow me to suggest improvements for the forthcoming 21st edition. A dramatic reenactment of my preparation for the survey But then I clicked on the link. Apparently, despite previous reassurances that the survey would be open until October 8, I was too late. The survey was already expired.  I was…

The hottest new Washington Supreme Court decision is Eyman v. Wyman. It has everything. A split judgment with no clear majority decision. A debate about the proper role of the courts when dealing with unconstitutional statutes. And Washington’s indirect initiative procedure. What’s Washington’s indirect initiative procedure? It’s that thing, where a group of citizens can collect signatures, and then propose a statute . . . . Okay, that’s enough of that gimmick. The case, however, is…