Court will only agree with this if evidence is very

Court will only agree with this if evidence is
very clear
 Tennesee Valley Authority v. Hill (1987) (below)
 Why do courts have to interpret?
 Legislatures draft bills purposely with
deliberate imprecision
 Some concepts are too difficult to define
without reference to a set of facts
 Amendment and deletion process leaves
many bills less clear
 Choice of language of a bill may have been
the result of a compromise
 Language is imperfect and few words are
susceptible to just one meaning
 Increasingly common in the states
 Covers banking law, criminal law, education, consumer
sales, motor vehicle law
 Why does it exist?
 Deals with the structure and day to day operation of
the government
 Some things just can’t be regulated by common law
like criminal activities- it needs to be clear what
people can/cannot do
 It can remedy new problems
 Uniform state statutes: page 93
 Our federal system permits great variation in law from state
to state
 states known as “laboratories of democracy”
 advantageous bc some states can try a
particular approach to a legal/regulatory
problem
 doesn’t work well - it can be
abandoned
 works well - other states can copy
the success
 NCCUSL is an org that drafts uniform or model laws with
the hope that many states will adopt them
 Ex: Uniform Commercial Code that governs
contracts for the sale of goods in the U.S., governs
leases of goods, provides the law of commercial
paper, governing the rights and obligations of the
makers of notes, drawers of checks, and endorsers
of negotiable instruments
 UCC Articles
 2 governs contracts for the sale of
goods
 2A governs lease of goods

 3 governs the rights and obligations
of the makers of notes, drawers of
checks, and endorsers of negotiable
instruments (the law of commercial
paper)
 4-8 deal with more specialized
situations
 9 covers all kinds of secured
transactions
 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure No. 8:
o Allowed a plaintiff to file a proper complaint simply by “a short and plain
statement of the claim”
o Conley v. Gibson
 The US Supreme Court ruled that a complaint should not be
dismissed for “failure to state a claim”
 The decision guided lower federal courts and state courts
 Overruled in 2007 by Bell Atlantic Corp v. Twombly
 Court held that a district court can dismiss a complaint
without having to go so far as to conclude that there is no
doubt that the plaintiff can simply not ever prove it’s claim
 Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009)
o On 9/11 Iqbal was arrested and not served his constitutional rights
o Complaint said that they adopted an unconstitutional policy and got harsh
confinement based on his race/religion/national origin
o They tried to dismiss it but court said no
o He pleaded guilty, served time, went back to Pakistan, then filed a lawsuit
for being treated poorly while serving his time, said Ashcroft was leader
behind it all
o They said although there are no facts currently, it does not mean it didn’t
happen
 Good to remember—plaintiff must prove the allegations.
Defendant does not actually have to prove anything.