Rules vs. Standards

Sarah Lawsky, A Logic for Statutes (Fla. Tax Rev., forthcoming), available at SSRN. Alice Abreu Richard Greenstein Professor Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern) has written a fascinating and thought-provoking essay on the logic of statutory interpretation—specifically as it applies to the Internal Revenue Code. Notwithstanding a long tradition of scholarship addressing the interpretation of legislative texts in general, careful attention to interpretation of the Code has received comparatively little attention. An important reason for this, as we have argued in previously published articles, has been the tendency to frame Code provisions as rules and to apply them deductively to the facts of particular cases. Such a practice pushes in the direction of a more-or-less mechanical interpretation of the Code, which in turn makes questions regarding statutory interpretation seem fairly uninteresting. Professor Lawsky’s essay engages directly and critically with this…

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