In an ideal world, the laws of Congress--known as federal statutes--would always be clearly worded and easily understood by the judges tasked with interpreting

Including a discussion of legislative powers, constitutional regulations relative to the forms of legislation and to legislative procedure.

Combining pragmatics, dialectics, analytics, and legal theory, this work translates interpretative canons into patterns of natural argument.

Contrary to traditional theories of statutory interpretation, which ground statutes in the original legislative text or intent, legal scholar William Eskridge a