"The Democrats' perspective is that the election code has to be read as mandating that each voter's intent, irrespective of whether the voter has properly punched or marked his or her ballot, must take precedence over statutory deadlines, the constitutional construction of statutes, and the discretion and operative duties of executive officers," Ms. Harris wrote.
Additionally, drafting records aren't just important for accountability, "they are needed by the courts to discern the legislative intent behind the construction of statutes," said Sklansky who noted that legislative intent was a consideration in the recent Supreme Courts ruling on the federal health care law last week. .
In a concurring opinion, Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen G. Breyer said they, too, were satisfied that the court's narrow construction of the statute had allayed "any constitutional concerns that might arise".
If Congress has not "directly spoken to the precise question at issue" and if the "intent of Congress is [not] clear," the courts must ask only "whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute".
In the F.D.A. decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "If Congress has not specifically addressed the question, a reviewing court must respect the agency's construction of the statute so long as it is permissible".
To be sure, the court's construction of this statute so as to make it include procedures other than live-birth abortion involves not only a disregard of fair meaning, but an abandonment of the principle that even ambiguous statutes should be interpreted in such fashion as to render them valid rather than void.
In a 6-to-3 decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that in cases where Congress has left ambiguous the outlines of a regulatory agency's jurisdiction, "the court must defer to the administering agency's construction of the statute so long as it is permissible".
Citing the Supreme Court's decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984), however, the panel concluded that it was obliged to defer to the IRS's interpretation of the relevant provisions (to extend "Chevron deference"), because that reading constituted, in Chevron's words, a "permissible construction of the statute".
"It is a cardinal principle" of statutory interpretation, however, that when an act of Congress raises "a serious doubt" as to its constitutionality, "this court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided".
"If we continue now with a construction of the statute that perpetuates the discrimination," Judge Gilbert Merritt wrote, "there is no longer any defense that the discrimination is unintentional".
This doctrine requires that when a law is ambiguous, courts must defer to an agency's reasonable construction of the statute.
