Absurdity in Disguise: How Courts Create Statutory Ambiguity to Conceal Their Application of the Absurdity Doctrine

60 Pages Posted: 19 Sep 2017

Date Written: September 15, 2017

Abstract

Although explicitly invoked only in rare cases, the absurdity doctrine is far more robust in practice than commonly assumed. This is because of a phenomenon I call “absurdity in disguise,” wherein judges use the anomalous or undesirable results of applying a statute’s ordinary meaning to “create” statutory ambiguity, opening the door to a variety of interpretive tools that would otherwise be unavailable. Ironically, the use of ambiguity to conceal the use of the absurdity doctrine is a direct result of judges’ increasing acceptance of textualist methods of statutory interpretation. Because textualism eschews results-oriented interpretive approaches, judges who wish to avoid a result of applying statutory text as written must employ text-centric arguments to do so. This article identifies the concept of absurdity in disguise and reveals its use in a variety of decisions at all levels of the federal courts.

Keywords: statutory interpretation, courts, legislation

Suggested Citation

Dove, Laura, Absurdity in Disguise: How Courts Create Statutory Ambiguity to Conceal Their Application of the Absurdity Doctrine (September 15, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3037620 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3037620

Laura Dove (Contact Author)

Troy University ( email )

Troy, AL
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
93
Abstract Views
523
Rank
530,607
PlumX Metrics