Can a lawyer tell me how they would do a case study to interpret a statute?

Answer 1

If I want to interpret a statute I generally look at the language of the statute itself to begin with. If the statute is simple, like, "you can't spit on the sidewalk," the language itself would allow me to make an informed decision about what it means.

Most statutes are not that simple, however, so I would look at how the courts interpret the statute. I have copies of the statutes in Nevada that include annotations, which are simple explanations that are derived from court decisions. These are generally a good place to start, but they may not be a good place to end unless they are extremely up-to-date. I would look up the cases that cite the statute and see what the court says about it. I can Shepardize those cases to see if there are any more recent cases or other cases that may interpret the statute differently.

In Nevada we have only one court of appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court. That is the only court that publishes decisions that can be used to interpret the law. In other states, there many be several layers of appeals courts and each one may interpret a statute differently. When dealing with federal issues, we, in Nevada, look to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court. As you may know, the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court often disagree about many issues (the "under God" issue came out of the Ninth Circuit).

Sometimes there is no case law that we can use to interpret a statute, or we may wish to make a good faith argument that a prior decision by a court interpreted the statute incorrectly. In that case, we can look at the legislative intent. That process is fairly involved and requires research into the specific arguments that were made by the various lawmakers when they were trying to get the law on the books in the first place.

Answer 2

The general process is simple, if you have access to a law library (available at most state courts and some colleges).

Get a copy of the appropriate book of laws. I'll use the federal laws as an example. Use what's called an Annotated edition. For federal laws, that's either the US Codes Annotated (USCA) or US Codes Service (USCS). Look up the law that you are interested in. After the text of the law, you'll see the relevant cases that have interpreted that law. Some editions include a short paragraph about what the interpretation was, others just point you at the case. Then, read the relevant cases to see how the law has been applied.

That's the basic process for the case study. Then there are general canons of statutory interpretation, which deal with the common rules applied when analyzing the structure and application of a statute.

For those who really want to dig deeper, get a copy of the legislative history for the statute. That will show the discussions and hearing held (if any) by the legislature when debating the statute. It gives a good insight into the legislative intent, which many courts are willing to use to resolve ambiguities when interpreting the statute.