William Eskridge and John Ferejohn propose an original theory of constitutional law whereby, while the Constitution provides a vision, our democracy advances by means of statutes that supplement or even supplant the written Constitution.

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Calabresi complains that we are "choking on statutes" and proposes a restoration of the courts to their common law function. From a series of lectures given by Calabresi as part of The Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures delivered at Harvard Law School in March 1977. "In his most recent publication, A Common Law for the Age of Statutes, based on the Oliver Wendell Holmes lectures he delivered at Harvard in March of 1977, Professor Calabresi has brought his ample juristic talents to bear on a foundational problem of the legal and democratic process. He has produced a monograph that in its quality, timeliness and provocativeness is likely to stand alongside the seminal works of Ronald Dworkin and Grant Gilmore." --Allan C. Hutchinson and Derek Morgan, 82 Columbia Law Review (1982) 1752. GUIDO CALABRESI [b. 1932] is Sterling Emeritus Professor of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. He was Dean of Yale Law School from 1985-1994 and became a United States Circuit Judge in 1994. He is also the author of The Costs of Accidents (1970), Tragic Choices (1978) and Ideals, Beliefs, Attitudes, and the Law (1985).

Contrary to traditional theories of statutory interpretation, which ground statutes in the original legislative text or intent, legal scholar William Eskridge argues that statutory interpretation changes in response to new political alignments, new interpreters, and new ideologies. It does so, first of all, because it involves richer authoritative texts than does either common law or constitutional interpretation: statutes are often complex and have a detailed legislative history. Second, Congress can, and often does, rewrite statutes when it disagrees with their interpretations; and agencies and courts attend to current as well as historical congressional preferences when they interpret statutes. Third, since statutory interpretation is as much agency-centered as judgecentered and since agency executives see their creativity as more legitimate than judges see theirs, statutory interpretation in the modern regulatory state is particularly dynamic. Eskridge also considers how different normative theories of jurisprudence--liberal, legal process, and antiliberal--inform debates about statutory interpretation. He explores what theory of statutory interpretation--if any--is required by the rule of law or by democratic theory. Finally, he provides an analytical and jurisprudential history of important debates on statutory interpretation.

Much of today's political rhetoric decries the welfare state and our maze of government regulations. Critics hark back to a time before the state intervened so directly in citizens' lives. In The People's Welfare, William Novak refutes this vision of a stateless past by documenting America's long history of government regulation in the areas of public safety, political economy, public property, morality, and public health. Challenging the myth of American individualism, Novak recovers a distinctive nineteenth-century commitment to shared obligations and public duties in a well-regulated society. Novak explores the by-laws, ordinances, statutes, and common law restrictions that regulated almost every aspect of America's society and economy, including fire regulations, inspection and licensing rules, fair marketplace laws, the moral policing of prostitution and drunkenness, and health and sanitary codes. Based on a reading of more than one thousand court cases in addition to the leading legal and political texts of the nineteenth century, The People's Welfare demonstrates the deep roots of regulation in America and offers a startling reinterpretation of the history of American governance.