Opinion ID: 2777003
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the doctrine of absurdity

Text: ¶ 67 When a certificate of election becomes “void” under Utah Code section 20A-4-406, the statute also dictates the conclusion that “the office is vacant.” A vacancy in an office, in turn, is addressed by the terms of Title 20A, Chapter 1, Part 5 of the code. In the event of a “midterm vacancy” in a county office, for example, the code provides for appointment of an “interim replacement” by the “county legislative body” and the subsequent election of a “replacement” by terms and conditions specified for a special election. UTAH CODE § 20A-1-508. This part of the code also speaks to a different sort of “vacancy”—a candidate vacancy. For a “registered political party that will have a candidate on a ballot in a primary election,” the code specifies procedures for the party to replace a candidate who “dies,” “resigns” due to a “disability,” or “is disqualified by an election officer for improper filing or nominating procedures.” Id. § 20A-1-501(1)(a). Specifically, this section of the code indicates that a “candidate vacancy” in a county office is to be filled by “the county central committee of a political party.” Id. § 20A-1-501(1). ¶ 68 As the majority indicates, this provision is not technically implicated in this case. Supra ¶ 43. By its terms, this section does not apply because this is not a case in which there is a “candidate vacancy” precipitated by death, resignation due to disability, or disqualification by an election officer for filing or nomination violations. ¶ 69 The question presented, accordingly, is how to deal with what appears to be a gap in the code. One possible approach, and the one that would be the ordinary course for a court, is for us to stand down—to do nothing, and treat the gap as one for the 33 COX v. LAYCOCK JUSTICE LEE, opinion of the Court in Part II legislature (and not this court) to fill going forward. This is the ordinary course because it respects the work product of the legislature—the statutory text. In most all cases, it is not the court’s job to fill in the gaps it finds in legislation. That is most always a legislative function, and thus not one for us. ¶ 70 With this in mind, I disagree with the line of cases cited approvingly in the majority opinion. See supra ¶ 42 n.51. I would not conclude, as these courts seem to, that “when a statute is silent” on a particular issue, it is our role to fill in the gap with our best sense of the legislature’s “intent” on the omitted matter. Supra ¶ 42 n.51 (citing cases). Instead of imagining the legislature’s intent in such circumstances, in an effort to “‘determine the best rule of law to ensure that the statute is applied uniformly,’” supra ¶ 42 n.51 (quoting Mariemont Corp. v. White City Water Improvement Dist., 958 P.2d 222, 226 (Utah 1998)), we should generally treat the omitted case as simply omitted from the legislation. 69 ¶ 71 Yet there is a narrow, limited exception to this rule. The exception is the doctrine of absurdity, under which we may find the text of a statute to encompass a term or condition not expressly provided by the legislature. This is strong medicine, not to be administered lightly. To respect the separation of powers and the constitutional prerogatives of the legislature, we must not substitute our views of good policy for that of the legislature. Instead, we should deem ourselves bound to follow and implement only the terms and conditions of the code except in the 69 See Iselin v. United States, 270 U.S. 245, 251 (1926) (Brandeis, J.) (“To supply omissions transcends the judicial function.”); Jones v. Smart, (1785) 99 Eng. Rep. 963 (K.B.) 967 (Buller, J.) (“[W]e are bound to take the act of parliament, as they have made it: a casus omissus can in no case be supplied by a Court of Law, for that would be to make laws . . . .”); Frank H. Easterbrook, Statutes’ Domains, 50 U. CHI. L. REV. 533, 548 (1983) (“Judicial interpolation of legislative gaps would be questionable even if judges could ascertain with certainty how the legislature would have acted. Every legislative body’s power is limited by a number of checks . . . . The foremost of these checks is time. . . . The unaddressed problem is handled by a new legislature with new instructions from the voters.”). 34 Cite as: 2015 UT JUSTICE LEE, opinion of the Court in Part II rare and limited circumstance in which the terms as written would lead to an outright absurdity. ¶ 72 The doctrine of absurdity is both deeply rooted and narrowly restricted. It traces its roots at least to Blackstone, who asserted that “where words bear . . . a very absurd signification, if literally understood, we must a little deviate from the received sense of them.” 1 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES  (emphases added). The emphasized terms in Blackstone’s formulation highlight two points of limitation. One is the degree of absurdity. If we are to maintain respect for the legislature’s policymaking role, and avoid the temptation to substitute our preferences for its decisions, we must not override the statutory text with our sense of good policy in a case in which we deem the statute’s formulation merely unwise or incongruous. To justify this extraordinary exercise of judicial power, the text as written must be so overwhelmingly absurd that no rational legislator could ever be deemed to have supported a literal application of its text. 70 70 See 1 JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES § 427, at 411 (1833) (“[I]f, in any case, the plain meaning of a provision, not contradicted by any other provision of the same instrument, is to be disregarded, because we believe the framers of that instrument could not intend what they say, it must be one, where the absurdity and injustice of applying the provision to the case would be so monstrous, that all mankind would, without hesitation, unite in rejecting the application.”). The Story formulation may contain a bit of hyperbole. In the divided society we live in today, I rather doubt there are any points of statutory interpretation on which “all mankind” would “unite” “without hesitation.” For me, the better formulation is one that would ask whether any rational legislator could have adopted the formulation rendered by the literal text. See Hanif v. Att’y Gen., 694 F.3d 479, 483 (3d Cir. 2012) (invoking the doctrine of absurdity upon a showing that “blind adherence to the literal meaning of a statute [would] lead to a patently absurd result that no rational legislature could have intended”); Cernauskas v. Fletcher, 201 S.W.2d 999, 1000 (Ark. 1947) (refusing to read literally a provision which read “[a]ll laws and parts of laws, and (con’t.) 35 COX v. LAYCOCK JUSTICE LEE, opinion of the Court in Part II ¶ 73 Some examples from modern cases may help to illustrate the standard. In 1995, a Texas statute provided an absolute defense to all “Chapter 601 offenses” under the Texas code where the accused “produce[d] in court a motor vehicle liability policy . . . that was valid at the time the offense is alleged to have occurred.” 71 Read literally, this provision would have provided not just a defense for the “Chapter 601 offense” of driving without proof of insurance, but absolute immunity (by production of proof of insurance) for other “Chapter 601 offenses” such as driving on a suspended license. In State v. Boone, 1998 WL 344931 (Tex. Ct. App. June 30, 1998) (unpublished), the court avoided this absurd result. It did so by limiting “Chapter 601 offense” to the offense of driving without proof of insurance. Id. at –. Rightly so, as no rational legislator could be deemed to have supported the statutory text as written literally.72 ¶ 74 The second limitation in Blackstone’s formulation is also important. It authorizes “little” or minor deviations from the statutory text to avoid absurdities in statutory meaning. As to larger deviations, the premise is that it is more likely that a judicial override of literal statutory text may represent a mere policy disagreement, and not a correction of an unintended (and obvious) disconnect between the policy adopted by the legislature and the text it used to implement it. To minimize the risk of judicial overreach, the absurdity doctrine should be limited to cases in which there is a “non-absurd reading that could be achieved by modifying the enacted text in relatively simple ways.” 73 The above-cited Texas case is a good example. Because it particularly Act 311 of the Acts of 1941, are hereby repealed” because “[n]o doubt the legislature meant to repeal all laws in conflict with that act, and, by error of the author or the typist, left out the usual words ‘in conflict herewith,’ which we will imply by necessary construction”). 71 TEX. TRANSP. CODE ANN. § 601.193(a) (West 1995). 72 See also Cernauskus, 201 S.W.2d at 1000 (refusing to read literally a statute which purported to wipe out all statutory law in the state of Arkansas because such a result was an absurdity). 73Michael S. Fried, A Theory of Scrivener’s Error, 52 RUTGERS L. REV. 589, 607 (2000); see also ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 239 (2012) (con’t.) 36 Cite as: 2015 UT JUSTICE LEE, opinion of the Court in Part II was “relatively simple” to read a limitation on “Chapter 601 offenses,” the Texas court was able to avoid an obvious absurdity in a manner consistent with the Blackstone limitations on the doctrine. ¶ 75 I would reach the same conclusion as the majority by application of these tenets of the doctrine of absurdity. For reasons explained by the court, it is impossible for me to imagine that any rational legislator would have supported a literal construction of the election code—a construction leading to the determination that annulment of a primary election would leave a registered political party without a designated candidate in the general election. That outcome is literally absurd, and by no means the sort of outcome that any legislator could have intended as any sort of legislative compromise. That conclusion is particularly clear (as the majority notes) in light of other provisions of the code that comprehensively prescribe mechanisms for a party to designate a replacement candidate when the candidate designated in the primary is otherwise unavailable—due to death, resignation due to disability, or disqualification by an election officer for filing or nomination violations. See supra ¶¶ 44–45 (citing UTAH CODE § 20A-1-501). And the point is hammered home by another provision of the code, section 20A-5-508, which, as the majority explains, allows a political party to “summarily certify” a candidate for a general election when a vacancy arises within 75 days of a primary but more than 65 days before the general election. Supra ¶ 45 n.58 (citing UTAH CODE § 20A-1-508(5)). In light of these provisions, and for reasons explained in greater detail in the majority opinion, I would conclude that no rational legislator could have intended to leave a registered political party without a candidate on the ballot in a case in which the primary election is annulled and set aside. ¶ 76 I would also endorse the majority’s adoption of the mechanism set forth in Utah Code section 20A-1-501(c)(iii) as the (“The doctrine of absurdity is meant to correct obviously unintended dispositions, not to revise purposeful dispositions that, in light of other provisions of the applicable code, make little if any sense.”). 37 COX v. LAYCOCK JUSTICE LEE, opinion of the Court in Part II applicable provision in this case. That provision prescribes a procedure for a party to designate a substitute candidate where the candidate chosen in a primary has been disqualified by an election officer. That is not technically what happened here. But extension of that provision to this (closely analogous) case represents a “relatively simple” adjustment to the statutory language. And for that reason the court’s adoption of this provision seems to me to be compatible with our limited authority under the narrow doctrine of absurdity as described above. —————— 38