Reading Law

by Scalia, Antonin; Garner, Bryan A.; Easterbrook, Frank H.

• ISBN13: 9780314275554
• ISBN10: 031427555X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-06-19
• Publisher: Thomson Reuters

Summary

In this groundbreaking book by best-selling authors Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation are systematically explained in an engaging and informative style-including several hundred illustrations from actual cases. Never before has legal interpretation been so fascinatingly explained. Both authors are individually renowned for their scintillating prose styles, and together they make even the seemingly dry subject of legal interpretation riveting. Though intended primarily for judges and the lawyers who appear before them to argue the meaning of texts, Reading Law is sound educational reading for anyone who seeks to understand how judges decide cases-or should decide cases. The book is a superb introduction to modern judicial decision-making. Justice Scalia, with 25 years of experience on the Supreme Court, is the foremost expositor of textualism in the world today. Bryan A. Garner, as editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary and author of Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage, is the most renowned expert on the language of the law. Reading Law is an essential guide to anyone who wishes to prevail in a legal argument-based on a constitution, a statute, or a contract. The book is calculated to promote valid interpretations: if you have lame arguments, you'll deplore the book; if you have strong arguments, you'll exalt it. But whatever your position, you'll think about law more clearly than ever before.

Author Biography

Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner methodically explain textualism: the long-prevailing theory of legal interpretation whereby judges derive meaning exclusively from text and context-without imposing personal views that have no basis in the text.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xix
Foreword	p. xxi
Preface	p. xxvii
Introduction	p. 1
Sound Principles of Interpretation	p. 47
Principles Applicable to All Texts
Fundamental Principles	p. 53
Semantic Canons	p. 69
Syntactic Canons	p. 140
Contextual Canons	p. 167
Principles Applicable Specifically to Governmental Prescriptions
Expected-Meaning Canons	p. 247
Government-Structuring Canons	p. 278
Private-Right Canons	p. 295
Stabilizing Canons	p. 318
Thirteen Falsities Exposed	p. 341
Afterword	p. 411
A Note on the Use of Dictionaries	p. 415
A Glossary of Legal Interpretation	p. 425
Table of Cases	p. 443
Bibliography	p. 465
Index	p. 507
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.