Court Opinion

ID: 9535614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:51:19.527039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:17.337295
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring.
The Court’s scrutiny of the legislative history of ORS 236.610-236.650, securing seniority rights of *274public employees during a transfer of governmental functions, and of the relationship of that statute to the laws dealing with the tenure and dismissal of public school teachers convinces me that petitioner cannot invoke the protection of ORS 236.610-236.650. I only add a few words to suggest, with deference, that this result does not depend on any "rules” of statutory construction.
Propositions such as that a later law generally displaces an earlier inconsistent one, or that when the legislature specifically addresses a narrow problem it probably means the problem to be governed by the specific statute rather than by a different law covering a more general class, or that individual sections of a statute, or related statutes, should be read in the context of the entire statutory scheme, are not themselves law unless enacted as such.1 They are merely the common sense descriptions of the search for the governing legislative rule or policy among the many enactments that, over the years, formulate those rules and policies by express provisions, by implication, or sometimes even by omission. Each of these common sense approaches fits some cases but not others, each has "exceptions” and opposite-and-equal counterparts,2 and each causes more harm than it is worth if it is not cheerfully ignored whenever it is an obstacle to understanding what the legislature enacted.
References to "rules,” "maxims” or "aids” to statutory construction might pass as merely a difference in the style of opinions, which is a personal matter, if it were not for the risk that they will be mistaken by courts and counsel as directives for how to argue and decide statutory questions. Experience shows that *275such statements in prior opinions interpreting one particular statute are quoted back to us, and presumably to the trial courts and the Court of Appeals, as authority for interpreting another statute by applying the stated rules or maxims. If these seemingly authoritative statements of juristic method do not actually govern decisions on statutory interpretation, as in fact they do not, a party’s reliance on them is not only a waste of time but may divert counsel and courts from a more fruitful line of inquiry into the particular legislation at issue. "Statutes are not fungible, and their interpretation is not a form of common law.” Anaconda Company v. Dept. of Rev., 278 Or 723, 727, 565 P2d 1084 (1977). To avoid such misdirection of energy and needless disappointment, I would not include the recitals of general constructional maxims in the opinion.

 See, e.g., ORS 174.010-174.090, ORS 174.530-174.540, ORS 161.025(2).

 The classic demonstration was Karl Llewellyn’s, in Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules or Canons About How Statutes are to be Construed, 3 Vand L Rev 395, 401-406 (1950), listing 28 pairs of canons matched by "thrust but parry,” each with authoritative citation. See also Chapman Bros. v. Miles-Hiatt Investments, 282 Or 643, 647 n. 2, 580 P2d 540 (1978).