Promoting Public-regarding Legislation through Statutory Interpretation: An Interest Group Model

Abstract

We live in a time of widespread dissatisfaction with the legislative outcomes generated by the political process. Too often the process seems to serve only the purely private interests of special interest groups at the expense of the broader public interests it was ostensibly designed to serve. While the current distrust of government represents a major shift away from the dominant public perception of "government as helper" that existed from the time of the New Deal until the present decade, the current attitude is not new by any means. As Professor Sunstein has observed, "[t]he problem of faction has been a central concern of constitutional law and theory since the time of the American Revolution." In fact, a basic justification offered by the framers for their new Constitution centered around its usefulness in controlling interest groups.