Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules or Canons about How Statutes Are to Be Construed

If a statute is to make sense, it must be read in the light of some assumed purpose. A statute merely declaring a rule, with no purpose or objective, is nonsense. If a statute is to be merged into a going system of law, moreover, the court must do the merging, and must in so doing take account of the policy of the statute-or else substitute its own version of such policy. Creative re- shaping of the net result is thus inevitable. But the policy of a statute is of two wholly different kinds-each kind somewhat limited in effect by the statute\u27s choice of measures, and by the statute\u27s choice of fixed language. On the one hand there are the ideas consciously before the draftsmen, the committee, the legislature: a known evil to be cured, a known goal to be attained, a deliberate choice of one line of approach rather than another. Here talk of intent is reasonably realistic; committee reports, legislative debate, historical knowledge of contemporary thinking or campaigning which points up the evil or the goal can have significance