Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 decision in Garland v. Cargill, which invalidated a federal regulation banning bump stocks by finding that they do not fall under the statutory definition of a machinegun. Professor Dorf argues that the Justices’ ideological views on gun control, rather than principled differences in interpretive methodology, best explain the divided outcome in this case and many other closely contested Supreme Court cases.
Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf discusses a recent unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that illustrates the lasting impact Justice Scalia had on the Court’s approach to statutory interpretation. Dorf describes the shift from purposivism to textually constrained purposivism over the past half century, and explains how they differ from the textualism Justice Scalia espoused.