1. Introduction and Overview

2. Why Courts Should Maximize Enactable Preferences when Statutes Are Unclear

Part I. Current Preferences Default Rules

3. The General Theory for Current Preferences Default Rules

4. Inferring Current Preferences from Recent Legislative Action

5. Inferring Current Preferences from Agency Action

Part II. Enactor Preferences Default Rules

6. From Legislative Intent to Probabilistic Estimates of Enactable Preferences

7. Moderation, Changed or Uncontemplated Circumstances, and a Theory of Meaning

Part III. Preference-Eliciting Default Rules

8. Eliciting Legislative Preferences

9. Canons Favoring the Politically Powerless

10. Linguistic Canons of Statutory Construction

11. Interpretations that May Create International Conflict

12. Explaining Seeming Inconsistencies in Statutory Stare Decisis

Part IV. Supplemental Default Rules

13. Tracking the Preferences of Political Subunits

14. Tracking High Court Preferences

Part V. Objections

15. The Fit with Prior Political Science Models and Empirical Data

16. The Critiques of Politics by Interest Group Theory and Collective Choice Theory

17. Alternative Default Rules that Protect Reliance or Avoid Change or Effect

18. Rebutting Operational and Jurisprudential Objections

Notes

Index

Einer Elhauge is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.