LEGISLATIVE HISTORY AND THE LIMITS OF JUDICIAL COMPETENCE - THE UNTOLD STORY OF HOLY-TRINITY-CHURCH

Intentionalists and textualists have vigorously debated whether judges should consult legislative history in statutory interpretation cases. A centerpiece of the debate has been the Supreme Court's 1892 decisio n in Holy Trinity Church v. United States, which overthrew the traditi onal rule that barred judicial recourse to internal legislative histor y. In this article, Professor Vermeule seeks to expand the terms of th e debate by revisiting Holy Trinity and presenting new evidence that t he Court misread the legislative history at issue. Vermeule argues, in light of this new picture of Holy Trinity, that the legislative histo ry debate has failed adequately to explore the problem of judicial com petence-the possibility that, even on intentionalist premises, the int eraction between distinctive features of legislative history and struc tural constraints governing the adjudicative process undermines the ju diciary's ability accurately to discern legislative intent from legisl ative history. After considering a range of doctrinal alternatives tha t might be implemented to address the judicial competence problem, Ver meule proposes a rule derived from intentionalist premises that would bar judicial resort to legislative history.