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'Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl 'd, And now a bubble burst, and now [...]

Our statute books use the word "any" ubiquitously in coverage and exclusion provisions. As any reader of the Supreme Court's statutory interpretation docket would know, a large number of cases turn on the contested application of this so-called universal quantifier. It is hard to make sense of the jurisprudence of "any." And any effort to offer a unified approach--knowing precisely when its scope is expansive (along the "literal-meaning" lines of "every" and "all") or confining (having a contained domain related to properties provided by contextual cues)--is likely to fail. This Article examines legislative drafting manuals, surveys centuries of Court decisions, and conducts in-depth pairwise comparisons of "any" cases to show the word's flexible set of uses in its multiple statutory guises. After evaluating evidence of the variability of "any," we recommend a new approach, a form of an "any" canon. We encourage adjudicators to appreciate the complexity of "any" more systematically and to consult a full range of sources--as even full-throated textualists have authorized from time to time--offering the relevant larger context judges will need to ascertain the scope of "any" in any given statutory scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This Article is the first in-depth empirical and doctrinal analysis of differences in statutory interpretation between the courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. It is also among the [...]

3. Briefs and Opinions As with other resources for interpretation of statutes, the Justices often receive inputs from the litigants in the form of dictionary definitions of statutory terms. To [...]

Scholars and judges have long disagreed on whether courts of appeals construing statutes ought to adapt their use of interpretive resources to Supreme Court approaches. If circuit courts and the Supreme Court approach statutory issues in similar ways, this can perhaps provide a measure of predictability for litigants and the public while conserving judicial resources; it may also enhance perceptions of fairness in the judicial system. Such normative arguments invite--even demand--a fuller understanding of the underlying descriptive reality: whether anything approaching uniformity or consistency actually exists. This Article aims to provide that understanding. It does so through an indepth examination of similarities and differences in how the Supreme Court and circuit courts apply key interpretive resources in a universe of identical cases involving statutory interpretation: those in which the Supreme Court reviews what an appeals court has decided. From circuit judges' standpoint, such cases are more complex than the bulk of their docket; moreover, the judges are nearly always aware when they are creating or contributing to circuit conflicts that are centrally important to the Supreme Court's granting of certiorari. Our findings provide a modicum of support for the virtue of predictability. The Supreme Court's increasing reliance during the Rehnquist and Roberts years on ordinary meaning, language canons, and dictionaries, and its declining interest in legislative history, are trends that the appeals courts followed with a lag of several years, suggesting that circuit courts are influenced to some degree by Supreme Court changes in emphasis and priority. But a number of findings lend descriptive support to normative arguments opposing uniformity. Some results support divergent approaches based on differences in institutional perspective: circuit courts prefer simpler interpretive frameworks as more compatible with their heavier workloads. Other findings supporting a pluralist approach in these identical cases suggest that appeals courts are reacting silently but negatively to the doctrinaire pronouncements of certain Supreme Court justices. And a third set of findings underscores both the necessity and the value of deliberative disputation between the two judicial levels. In the end, it is the divergence in interpretive approaches between the two levels of courts that stands out. Based on our empirical and doctrinal analyses, a substantial degree of divergence seems inevitable even in this special universe of identical cases. Whatever its desirability may be as a normative matter, uniformity between the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals in reliance on interpretive resources is a chimera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much in the field of statutory interpretation is predicated on "interpretive dialogue" between courts and legislatures. Yet, the idea of such dialogue is often advanced as little more than a slogan; the dialogue that courts, legislators, and scholars are imagining too often goes unexamined and underspecified. This Article attempts to organize thinking about the ways participants and theorists conceive, and should conceive, of interbranch dialogue within statutory interpretation. The Article itself proceeds by using a dialogic and dialectical method. It first develops various positions against "interbranch dialogue." By invoking arguments from textualism, public choice, and positive political theory, it advances the position that dialogue should not animate thinking in statutory interpretation. With that auspicious start, the Article then explores in conceptual and descriptive terms what would count as true dialogic activity. Interbranch dialogue is not reducible to mere textual pronouncements or anticipatory signaling efforts. Rather, it is best understood as responsive communication between the two institutions, in which each party listens to, takes seriously, and values what the other party says and thinks, even if there is disagreement on particular interpretive outcomes or their implications. This communication may emerge in unscripted or unanticipated terms or it may flow more formally from mechanisms designed to generate responsive exchange. The Article highlights and examines numerous modes of dialogue that are initiated by the legislature and also by the courts, using examples from both federal and state levels. The Article concludes by rehabilitating and rejuvenating the dialogue model in normative terms, drawing interbranch dialogue back to its legal process roots and revealing its links to more contemporary deliberative democratic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract There is every reason to admire the transformative analytic power of the DSI thesis: Professor Eskridge has persuasively identified the realities of what courts so often do. In this [...]

The article honors the life and work of law professor and writer Peter Shane. Topics discussed include his contributions on separation of powers tensions and on rule of law, his government service and his understanding of the executive branch, and his lesser known talents including songwriting and cooking.

This Article examines in depth an important but underappreciated development in international labor law: How norms promulgated by the International Labor Organization ("ILO") have affected the development and implementation of domestic labor laws and practices since the early 1990s. The newly globalized focus of labor law--energized by substantial expansions in international trade and investment--has been recognized by scholars, practitioners, and governments, but it has not previously been explored and analyzed in this systematic way. The Article focuses on two central regulatory areas--child labor and freedom of association--and relies on doctrinal and policy developments in these areas, as evidenced by the actions of legislatures, courts, and executive branches in more than twenty countries. In doing so, the Article addresses how international labor standards have influenced national labor law and practice in the Americas (excluding the United States)--directly through the soft-law route of convention ratification and ILO supervisory monitoring, and indirectly through trade agreement labor provisions that incorporate ILO norms. The resultant changes in domestic laws and practices have been evolutionary rather than transformative, and developments in law outpace those in practice, but within these parameters the changes have been substantial. The Article then places this internationalizing trend in the context of two recognized theories that seek to explain the socialization of human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]