Is it better to follow the strict letter of the law or to adjust it where appropriate to produce a more equitable result? This is one of the oldest questions in legal thought, one that can be traced back at least to Aristotle — and on Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in, 5-4, on the side of equity, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the deciding vote.
Ordinarily, a decision like this one, involving the interpretation of the Federal Tort Claims Act would be of interest only to practitioners who are specialists in statutory interpretation. But this isn’t an ordinary spring. In June, the Supreme Court will hand down its most important statutory interpretation case in a generation, essentially deciding whether the Affordable Care Act will survive or fall. The interpretation question before the court in that high profile case, King v. Burwell, bears a striking structural resemblance to the obscure one the court decided Wednesday. And, not for the first time, Kennedy is the justice whose intentions we can’t help trying to predict.
