The Belt-and-Suspenders Canon

AuthorEthan J. Leib & James J. Brudney
PositionJohn D. Calamari Distinguished Professor of Law at Fordham Law School/Holds the Joseph Crowley Chair in Labor and Employment Law at Fordham Law School
Pages735-769
735
The Belt-and-Suspenders Canon
Ethan J. Leib & James J. Brudney*
ABSTRACT: This Essay christens a new canon into the doctrines of statutory
interpretation, one that can counter the too-powerful canon that has courts
imposing norms against redundancy in their readings of statutes. Judges
engaging in statutory interpretation must do a better job of recognizing how
and why legislatures choose not to draft with perfect parsimony. Our Essay
highlights the multifarious ways legislatures in federal and state governments
self-consciously and thoughtfully—rather than regrettably and lazily—think
about employing “belt-and-suspenders” efforts in their drafting practices. We
then analyze courts’ disparate efforts to integrate a belt-and-suspenders canon
into their thinking about anti-surplusage rules and other textual canons. By
sketching a promising future for this new canon, we hope to draw judicial
practice closer to legislative practice and to enhance the enterprise of statutory
interpretation for textualists and intentionalists alike.
I.INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 736
II.BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING ........................... 741
A.A TYPOLOGY OF BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS DRAFTING
TECHNIQUES ........................................................................... 741
1.Caution .......................................................................... 741
2.Consensus ...................................................................... 743
B.BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS IN CONGRESS ........................................ 743
1.When legislators worry about conflicts among
statutory schemes .......................................................... 744
2.When Congress needs to make sure longstanding
policy does not get abrogated ...................................... 744
3.Patent law and redundancy .......................................... 745
4.When Congress internally disagrees about using
belt-and-suspenders approaches .................................. 747
*
Ethan J. Leib is the John D. Calamari Distinguished Professor of Law at Fordham Law
School. James Brudney holds the Joseph Crowley Chair in Labor and Employment Law at
Fordham Law School. We thank Aaron Bruhl, Rick Hills, Olati Johnson, Anita Krishnakumar,
Mark Levin, Vic Nourse, Richard Re, and Peter Strauss for their thoughtful comments on prior
drafts. We are grateful to Thomas Lloyd, Janet Kearney, Gail McDonald, and Alison Shea for
excellent research assistance, and to Fordham Law School for generous financial support.
736 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 105:735
5.When slack in the private regulatory process
demands extra caution ................................................. 748
C.BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS IN STATE LEGISLATURES ....................... 750
1.When an amendment is needed for caution and
consensus ....................................................................... 750
2.When a legislature needs an exclamation point! ........ 751
3.When state legislatures worry about impairments
of core state values ........................................................ 752
4.When a state legislature reveals some of its
anxieties about its work product ................................. 753
III.BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS IN THE COURTS ....................................... 753
A.REJECTING ANTI-REDUNDANCY NORMS IN FAVOR OF
RECOGNIZING BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS DRAFTING ...................... 755
B.REJECTING BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS ARGUMENTS ....................... 757
C.HARD CASES ........................................................................... 759
IV.ANALYZING BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS .............................................. 765
A.CONTINUING LEGISLATIVE-JUDICIAL DIVERGENCE ..................... 765
B.THE FUTURE FOR A BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS CANON ................... 767
V.CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 769
I. INTRODUCTION
We aim here to christen a canon into the doctrines of statutory
interpretation. We propose that a “belt-and-suspenders” canon, invoked with
some frequency during the legislative drafting process, should be recognized
by judges and scholars as presumptively probative and at times controlling.
Two recent high profile cases—Yates v. United States1 and Hively v. Ivy Tech2
—consider the possibility that the relevant legislatures whose work product
was at issue wrote their statutes with features that were deliberatively
duplicative, redundant, and/or reinforcing rather than perfectly
parsimonious.3 This appreciation for the realities associated with legislative
drafting bears a family resemblance to an older canon recently rediscovered
1. Yates v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1074, 1096 (2015) (Kagan, J., dissenting) (“The presence
of both § 1519 and § 1512(c)(1) in the final Act may have reflected belt-and-suspenders caution.”).
2. Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll. of Ind., 853 F.3d 339, 344 (7th Cir. 2017) (en banc)
(“Congress may choose a belt-and-suspenders approach to promote its policy objectives.”
(quoting McEvoy v. IEI Barge Servs., Inc., 622 F.3d 671, 677 (7th Cir. 2010))).
3. See also Rimini St., Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc., 139 S. Ct. 873, 881 (2019) (“Redundancy is not
a silver bullet. . . . Sometimes the better overall reading of the statute contains some redundancy.”);
King v. Burwell, 135 S. Ct. 2480, 2498 (2015) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Lawmakers sometimes repeat
themselves—whether out of a desire to add emphasis, a sense of belt-and-suspenders caution, or a
lawyerly penchant for doublets (aid and abet, cease and desist, null and void).”).
2020] THE BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS CANON 737
by some prominent jurists: ex abundanti cautela,4 translated as “in an
abundance of caution.” Historically more than recently, courts have
recognized that legislatures can draft statutes to be abundantly cautious rather
than to be supremely concise.5 Yet the idea that legislatures use belts and
suspenders is ultimately in tension with the hoary canon that statutes ought
to be presumed to contain no superfluities, a canon widely recognized even if
subject to frequent critique.6
4. See Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105, 140 (2001) (Souter, J., dissenting)
(“[T]he explanation for the catchall is not ejusdem generis; instead, the explanation for the
specifics is ex abundanti cautela, abundance of caution.” (citing Fort Stewart Sch. v. FLRA, 495 U.S.
641, 646 (1990))); Seven-Sky v. Holder, 661 F.3d 1, 37–38 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (Kavanaugh, J.,
dissenting) (“The lesson from the redundancy in these sections . . . is not to read provisions out
of the statute or contrary to their plain meaning, as the majority opinion would have us do.
Rather, we should read the provisions according to their terms, recognizing that Congress often
wants to make ‘double sure’—a technique so common that it has spawned its own Latin canon,
ex abundanti cautela.”); Marx v. Gen. Revenue Corp., 668 F.3d 1174, 1183 (10th Cir. 2011) (“It
may seem redundant, but if canons of construction are to be invoked, the appropriate one is that
of ex abundanti c autela (abundance of caution), which teaches that Congress may on occasion
repeat language in order to emphasize it.”); United States v. Bendtzen, 542 F.3d 722, 727 (9th
Cir. 2008); United States v. Kaluza, 780 F.3d 647, 658 (5th Cir. 2015).
5. The lineage of the ex abundanti cautela canon in the United States traces back to some
of our most famous justices. See United States v. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 76, 115 (1820)
(Marshall, C.J.); Brown v. United States, 12 U.S. (8 Cranch) 110, 150–51 (1814) (Story, J.,
dissenting). For other earlier uses, see Childress v. Emory, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 642, 663 (1823);
Bank of Hamilton v. Lessee of Dudley, 27 U.S. (2 Pet.) 492, 502 (1829); Manhattan Co. v. City
of Ironwood, 74 F. 535, 540 (6th Cir. 1896) (Taft, J.); In re New Amsterdam Motor Co., 180 F.
943, 944 (S.D.N.Y. 1910); In re John Liddle Cut Stone Co., 242 F. 691, 693 (S.D.N.Y. 1916); In
re Toole, 294 F. 975, 977 (S.D.N.Y. 1920); Comm’r v. Van Schaick, 83 F.2d 940, 942 (2d Cir.
1936); Founders General Corporation Corp. v. Hoey, 84 F.2d 976, 978 (2d Cir. 1936). We don’t
know why so many of these cases from S.D.N.Y. and the Second Circuit are penned by Augustus
Hand. And he rejects the reasoning about as often as he embraces it.
Crediting a legislature’s efforts in statutory drafting to “make assurance doubly sure” is
another somewhat outdated way of identifying the phenomenon of legislative repetitiveness, with
courts appreciating rather than merely excoriating the reality. See, e.g., Resolution Trust Corp. v.
Thompson, No. 89 C 4486, 1992 WL 26721, at *2 (N.D. Ill. 1992); O’Neal v. O’Neal, 8 Ga. 439,
441 (1850); State v. Wright, 37 P. 313, 314 (Wash. 1894); City of St. Louis v. Dorr, 41 S.W. 1094,
1095–96 (Mo. 1898); Union Trust Co. of Md. v. Ward, 59 A. 192, 193 (Md. 1904); People v.
Frost, 12 P.2d 1096, 1097 (Cal. App. Dep’t Super. Ct. 1932); State v. Wills, 136 S.W. 125 (Mo.
App. 1911); Shook v. D.C. Fin. Responsibility & Mgmt. Assistance Auth., 132 F.3d 775, 782 (D.C.
Cir. 1998). Courts here are harking back to Shakespeare. See WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, MACBETH
act 4, sc. 1 (“But yet I’ll make assurance double sure.”). And Shakespeare never really gets old.
See Joffe v. Google, Inc., 746 F.3d 920, 926 (9th Cir. 2013) (crediting legislative redundancy over
the rule against superfluities); Proffitt v. FDIC, 208 F.3d 1066, 1067 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (Silberman,
J., dissenting) (mem.) (same); Loving v. IRS, 742 F.3d 1013, 1019 (D.C. Cir. 2014)
(“[L]awmakers, like Shakespeare characters, sometimes employ overlap or redundancy so as to
remove any doubt and make doubly sure.”); Mercy Hosp., Inc. v. Burwell, 206 F. Supp. 3d 93, 98
(D.D.C. 2016) (invoking Macbeth and emphasizing that “Congress had good reason to take a
belt-and-suspenders approach”).
6. See, e .g., Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., Inc., 513 U.S. 561, 574 (1995) (noting that courts
should tend to avoid interpretations of statutes that “render[] some words altogether
redundant”). In a recent study, John Golden found that the rule against superfluities is massively

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