Paper Summary:

This paper explains the way judicial interpretation works in the American legal system and points out that, while jurists do not write law, they are responsible for interpreting it with the intention of achieving just and ethical results. The paper also points out that those interpretations are subject to the jurist's personal values and opinions, but that each jurist must still strive to interpret statutes so that they actually do justice and endeavor to change laws that are unjust in their present incarnation and application.

From the Paper:

"Judges draft no legislation, but they create law nevertheless, through their powers of judicial interpretation. Judges determine the outcome of particular cases by interpreting the meaning of a single phrase, and sometimes, a single word within the applicable statute. By creating legal precedents, jurists sometimes decide entire lines of future cases merely by how they choose to interpret a single word, or to resolve a single apparent ambiguity in the language of a statute."

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