I think “oops” is a bit overly broad. It’s not intended to be a face-saving doctrine, but one to promote predictability of the law. I think it makes less sense in a constitutional setting, where only the court itself has a realistic opportunity to fix its mistakes. But when interpreting statutes, why not? If the court misread the legislature’s intent, all it takes is a simple majority of the legislature to correct it.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:19 am
I think “oops” is a bit overly broad. It’s not intended to be a face-saving doctrine, but one to promote predictability of the law. I think it makes less sense in a constitutional setting, where only the court itself has a realistic opportunity to fix its mistakes. But when interpreting statutes, why not? If the court misread the legislature’s intent, all it takes is a simple majority of the legislature to correct it.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Egad, I agree (at least in part) with Xrlq. I think that makes three times now that this has happened.