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76 Miss. L.J. 55 (2006-2007)
A Prolegomena to Federal Statutory Interpretation: Identifying the Sources of Interpretive Problems

handle is hein.journals/mislj76 and id is 65 raw text is: A PROLEGOMENA TO FEDERAL STATUTORY INTERPRETATION: IDENTIFYING THE SOURCES OF INTERPRETIVE PROBLEMS J. Gordon Christy* INTRODUCTION The Constitution allocates sole legislative authority to Congress and ultimate interpretive powers to the federal courts.' How to harmonize these powers has remained un- clear for almost 220 years.2 If Congress, the legislature, has the sole authority to legislate, and if the results of legislating are evidenced in statutes, written texts, approved by the legis- lature, may the courts, in the interpretive process, constitu- tionally add to or subtract from the substantive or remedial effect of the written provisions of those statutes, including * J.D. University of Texas at Austin. Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal Analysis and Reasoning, Mississippi College School of Law. Professor Christy was previously Special Counsel to the Deputy General Counsel of Ford Motor Company, a partner in the Dallas, Texas, law firms of Johnson & Gibbs and Strasburger & Price, and Associate Professor of Law in the University of Oklahoma College of Law. ' U.S. CONST. art. I, § 1; U.S. CONST. art. III, §§ 1 , 2. Both the executive and the various administrative agencies must interpret laws in the process of administering them. They, therefore, of necessity have interpretive power. That power is simply not the ultimate power. The final say resides with the federal courts. ' If one traces the doctrine of legislative supremacy in the Anglo-American tradition back to circa 1215, which is not entirely unreasonable, then harmonizing these powers has eluded jurists in the Anglo-American tradition for nearly 800 years. To put matters in an even longer-term perspective, the first known code of laws, the Sumerian Code of Lipit-Ishtar, was promulgated circa 2500 B.C. Francis Rue Steele, The Code of Lipit-Ishtar, 52 AM. J. ARCHAEOLOGY 425 (1948). The need to distinguish the powers of the legislator from those of the interpreter of statutes apparently extends back over 4,500 years.

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