Rule Of Lenity Research Articles

<p>The Rule of Lenity as a Disruptor</p>

<p>The Rule of Lenity as a Disruptor</p>

Invention or Interpretation: Textualism & Tracing in § 1957 of the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986

Congress passed the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 in an effort to cut off the “life-blood” of organized crime by targeting the financial incentives that fuel it. One way in which the Act did this was through § 1957 which prohibits any transaction that consists of criminally derived funds of $10,000 or more, effectively making it a crime to place dirty money in the legitimate financial system. For roughly ten-years following § 1957’s enactment, the government was able to secure a conviction simply by showing that, even when clean and dirty funds had been commingled, § 1957 was violated when the defendant has earned $10,000 from criminal activities proceeds and a $10,000 transaction later took place. This approach did not require the government to actually trace the path of those criminally derived funds. In 1997, the Ninth Circuit changed this following its decision in Rutgard, where it held that the plain meaning of the statute requires that the transaction alleged to have violated § 1957 actually be entirely made up of criminally derived funds, thus requiring the government to prove that the funds in the allegedly criminal transaction were criminally derived.. In doing so, it is argued by critics, the Ninth Circuit has effectively placed a number of criminal transactions beyond the reach of the law where funds are commingled due to the fungibility of money. Unlike the Ninth Circuit, the majority of federal circuit courts have gotten around this seemingly plain meaning by arguing that the Ninth Circuit’s approach is “unworkable” and have placed congressional intent at the forefront of their analysis of § 1957. In their effort to effectuate § 1957, these courts have effectively read out the plain language of the statute. This approach is not only at odds with a textual understanding of statutes, wherein we give the words their plain meaning as they were understood at the time they were passed, the majority’s rule is in contravention to established principles of our jurisprudence with regard to the rule of lenity, and more importantly, due process and the separation of powers. This creates an untenable result. The Ninth Circuit’s approach is textually correct but leaves many criminal transactions beyond the reach of the law. Meanwhile, the majority’s rule pursues a noble end to disrupt money laundering while using textually and constitutionally unsound means in order to do so. This paper seeks a middle way. Because the plain meaning of the statute clearly requires that criminally derived funds are traced in order to secure a conviction, the statutory language should be amended by Congress. In arguing that it is Congress’ job to resolve this split, this paper contributes to the scholarship by breaking with the existing legal and scholarly consensus in advocating for a textual approach to § 1957 and encouraging a legislative rather than legal remedy. This will not only resolve the tension between the majority rule and the text but will also ensure that the judiciary retains its proper role as an interpreter of law rather than an inventor.

Oceans Apart?: The Rule of Lenity in Australia and the United States

Abstract Occasionally traced back to Byzantine times, the rule that penal statutes are to be interpreted strictly in favor of the subject, also known as the rule of lenity, now finds expression in common law countries across the world. This Article compares the origins and evolution of the rule in Australia and the United States. The comparison is timely because of the current uncertainty in both jurisdictions about the rule's rationale and scope and because of an emerging global trend towards the “constitutionalization” of common law rules of interpretation. In the course of the analysis, various facets of the rule are discussed, including its common law origins; jurisprudential development; purported constitutional foundations; and modifications by state and federal statutes. Tracing the rule's development in each country reveals significant commonalities, but also important differences, in the respective approaches to the interpretation of criminal statutes. Most importantly, despite similarities in the two countries’ constitutional structures, the rule has assumed constitutional significance in the United States but not in Australia. Identification of this marked difference provides an opportunity to reflect on the separation of powers, and the federal structure, of each country.

Lenity Before Kisor: Due Process, Agency Deference, and the Interpretation of Ambiguous Penal Regulations

When interpreting punitive regulations that are ambiguous, lower courts face a seemingly stark choice: Either they follow the Supreme Court’s instruction in Kisor v. Wilkie and defer to the enforcing agency’s typically more severe interpretation, or they rely on the venerable rule of lenity—also endorsed by the Supreme Court—and adopt the less severe interpretation. This choice need not be made: Kisor deference and lenity do not clash when properly applied because these two doctrines operate at different ambiguity thresholds. Lenity tips in favor of defendants when a regulation’s meaning is subject to “reasonable doubt,” whereas agency deference only applies when a regulation is “genuinely ambiguous”—a more searching standard. Lenity, therefore, must apply before agency deference. This order of operations makes sense both of the doctrines and their justifications. Lenity’s constitutional underpinnings—in particular, the due process requirements of “fair notice” and conviction “beyond a reasonable doubt”—take precedence over the lower-order policy rationales behind agency deference.

The New Insider Trading

Pursuant to the SEC’s Rule 10b-5, in order to obtain a conviction for insider trading based upon a tipper-tippee theory, the government must prove that the tipper received a personal benefit for the tip, and that the tippee knew about that benefit. The last five years of blockbuster insider trading cases have focused on this seemingly nebulous personal benefit test, and the Supreme Court has been unable to clear the muddy waters. As a result, the parameters of insider trading remain hard to pin down, and often shift depending on the facts of the most recent case. Two terms ago, the Supreme Court, in an unsurprising unanimous decision in Salman v. United States, reaffirmed the holding of Dirks, from which the personal benefit test arose. The Court in Salman, however, failed to elucidate the more problematic areas of insider trading, including the application of the personal benefit test if the tippee is not a trading relative or friend. Legal practitioners, legislators, and academics have offered up various solutions for the problem of having an amorphous law against insider trading, yet none have succeeded. This Article suggests that the hubbub over defining the personal benefit element of insider trading — sure to reach a fever pitch the next time a cert petition on the issue is granted — may be misguided. This is because there may be a simpler way to bring an insider trading case. Since Sarbanes-Oxley, there has been a sleepy provision of the criminal code that could present an end-around to the morass of insider trading precedents under Rule 10b-5. Under 18 U.S.C. §1348, the government can bring an insider trading case under the more general umbrella of securities fraud, which has scant jurisprudential precedent. In other words, the heavily-litigated personal benefit test found in Dirks may not apply to a charge of insider trading under §1348. The elements required to prove a charge under §1348 are similar to other fraud-based offenses such as mail and wire fraud, health care fraud, and bank fraud. Whether §1348 was intended to apply to insider trading in particular is an open question, and a broader question is whether the jurisprudential interpretation for the elements of the crime of insider trading as defined under Rule 10b-5 should be imported into the judicial interpretation of § 1348. In other words, if the conduct that constitutes criminal insider trading under Rule 10b-5 exists only if the elements of the Dirks test are met, then a §1348 charge for criminal insider trading may create an entirely new scheme and definition of the crime. This Article analyzes the potential of this dual paradigm, and argues that, given the uncertainty and shifting parameters of insider trading prohibitions, application of §1348 to insider trading should be afforded the rule of lenity.

Previously convicted NECC executives acquitted under ‘rule of lenity’

Previously convicted NECC executives acquitted under ‘rule of lenity’

The Appellate Rule of Lenity

The Appellate Rule of Lenity, 131 Harv. L. Rev. F. (2018) responds Abbe Gluck & Richard Posner’s recent article, Statutory Interpretation on the Bench: A Survey of Forty-Two Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 1298 (2018). My piece argues that Professor Gluck and Judge Posner are right to point to appellate courts as the locus of most statutory interpretation, and notes that in their survey of appellate judges, lenity takes on special prominence. But in my review of the actual practice of appellate judges in all the criminal law statutory interpretation cases in the Roberts Court so far and in the appellate courts below, lenity does not fare well. The Supreme Court has elevated the rule of lenity into an interpretive precedent (on par with Chevron deference), I argue, showing that the Justices consider the framework to almost every question of criminal law statutory interpretation and applies the rule to the benefit of the defendant almost a third of the time. By contrast, appellate judges – despite their statements that lenity is special and binding – almost never consider the framework or the rule. If my survey of appellate court practice reflects a broader trend, this Response argues that many courts and commentators have gotten lenity wrong by failing to distinguish between regular consideration of the lenity framework and constitutionally driven application of the rule. Lower courts’ and commentators’ appraisals of lenity have led to the false impression that the Supreme Court’s approach to the framework is inconsistent and weakly grounded. In fact, until the recent misunderstandings that accompanied harsh punishment, mass incarceration, and the breakdown of the criminal justice system the Supreme Court has historically and constitutionally required application of lenity for three distinct rationales: legislative supremacy, due process/fair warning, and defendants’ rights. In the end, I argue for a return to the “constitutional rule of lenity,” as not only a desirable but arguably required approach to criminal law statutes, which is particularly timely as a guide for appellate and other judges to respond appropriately to the increasingly urgent need for more cautionary approaches to criminal law statutory interpretation in view of the collapse of the American criminal justice system.

Change, Creation, and Unpredictability in Statutory Interpretation: Interpretive Canon Use in the Roberts Court's First Decade

In resolving questions of statutory meaning, the lion’s share of Roberts Court opinions considers and applies at least one interpretive canon, whether the rule against surplusage or the presumption against state law preemption. This is part of a decades-long turn toward textualist statutory interpretation in the Supreme Court. Commentators have debated how to justify canons, since they are judicially created rules that reside outside the statutory text. Earlier studies have cast substantial doubt on whether these canons can be justified as capturing congressional practices or preferences; commentators have accordingly turned toward second-order justifications, arguing that canons usefully make interpretation constrained and predictable, supplying Congress with a stable interpretive background. Based on an extensive study tracking the use of over 30 interpretive canons in the first 10 years of the Roberts Court, this Article attempts to contribute evidence to the debate over canons. The data raise substantial questions regarding stability and predictability. Despite a long tradition of use, some canons have essentially disappeared; meanwhile, the Court has created others out of whole cloth. In addition, application is erratic. The Roberts Court Justices have declined to apply even the most widely engaged canons 20–30% or more of the time, often for difficult-to-anticipate reasons; some well-known canons, such as the rule of lenity and the presumption against preemption, were applied roughly at a 50–50 rate. The story is worse in the many cases in which multiple canons are considered. Based on these and other findings, this Article accordingly argues that predictability and stability arguments cannot supply a firm foundation for canon use. The study also reveals troubling mismatches between canons actually in use and congressional staff acceptance of canons. The Article concludes by suggesting some future directions for investigation and reform.

The American Nondelegation Doctrine

An American nondelegation doctrine is flourishing. Contrary to the standard account, it does not forbid Congress from granting broad discretion to executive agencies. Instead it is far narrower and more targeted. It says, very simply, that executive agencies cannot make certain kinds of decisions unless Congress has explicitly authorized them to do so. In so saying, the American nondelegation doctrine promotes the central goals of the standard doctrine, by preventing Congress from shirking and by requiring it to focus its attention on central questions, and also by protecting liberty. The abstract idea of “certain kinds of decisions” is currently filled in by, among other things, the canon of constitutional avoidance; the rule of lenity; and the presumptions against retroactivity and extraterritoriality. More recent nondelegation canons, not yet firmly entrenched, require agencies to consider costs and forbid them from interpreting statutes in a way that produces a large-scale increase in their regulatory authority. The cost-consideration canon makes a great deal of sense, especially as a way of disciplining the modern regulatory state; the “major questions doctrine,” as it is sometimes called, is less obviously correct. and its proper provenance depends on the nature of the relevant statute.

The Interpretation of Legal Language

In everyday interactions, we do our best to resolve linguistic vagueness, ambiguity, and other indeterminacies contextually. When these problems arise in the interpretation of authoritative legal texts, by contrast, it is not abundantly clear what context is relevant, or even legitimate. This article discusses approaches that legal analysts take in resolving linguistic indeterminacy. The most basic principle is reliance on the “ordinary meaning” of a term in dispute, on the assumption that this default interpretation is most likely to be within the intention of the drafters. However, there is no clear understanding of what “ordinary meaning” means or how to find it. Most recently, judges and legal scholars have turned to using linguistic corpora to assist in determining ordinary meaning in such cases. Other cases, focusing on the resolution of syntactic or semantic ambiguity, are less common. Courts in these cases sometimes resort to legally based “tiebreakers,” such as the rule of lenity, which requires courts to resolve ambiguity in favor of the accused in criminal cases.

Continuity and the Legislative Design

In analyzing the revival of canons in statutory interpretation, Professor David Shapiro has argued that many of the Court’s most prominent canons—including expressio unius, ejusdem generis, the rule of lenity, canon requiring narrow construction of statutes in derogation of the common law, and the federalism canon—all reflect a bias against finding a statutory change in the status quo. These canons, he argues, promote a range of substantive and process values. They also reflect the reality that, in legislation, “change is news but continuity is not.” This paper argues that if the canons do, in fact, tend toward continuity, that tendency captures an important feature of the legislative process, at least at the federal level. Under the U.S. Constitution, lawmaking is cumbersome. It is that way by design. Bicameralism and presentment emphasize caution, consensus, and deliberation. In so doing, the federal legislative process privileges continuity over change. Even if that pro-continuity bias does not ultimately present a sufficient reason for embracing or retaining any given canon of construction, it surely presents a powerful answer to those who would abandon traditional rules of construction because they reflect a status quo bias.

Same Crime, Different Time: Why we Need an Amended Guideline for Repeat Offenders to Minors

Currently there is a circuit split between the Second and Ninth Circuits in determining whether or not to apply previous juvenile sex offenses to the sentencing of an adult sex offender. The Second Circuit feels it is within the trial court's discretion to apply an enhancement of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines by applying either a juvenile adjudicated or unadjudicated sex offense to the sentencing of an adult offender. The Ninth Circuit sees that as improper and only adult sex offenses should be counted toward the sentencing of adult sex offenses. Due to the vague language of this enhancement, the determination of how to apply this is up to the court's discretion. This Note proposes that the U.S. Sentencing Commission amend section 4B1.5, and decide in favor of the Ninth Circuit due to the plain text reading of the statute, as well as the intent of the guideline itself alongside the “rule of lenity” as understood in the Ninth Circuit's reasoning of only applying adult offenses to the sentencing of that adult later on in life. The positive public policy of rehabilitation of juvenile offenders would be served greatly by this amendment to this guideline. By eliminating the possibility of having such an offense count against a juvenile in the future would allow and encourage those juveniles to take positive steps toward their future.

The Votes of Other Judges

Judges on a multimember court might vote in two different ways. In the first, judges behave solipsistically, imagining themselves to be the sole judge on the court, in the style of Ronald Dworkin’s mythical Judge Hercules. On this model, judges base their votes solely on the information contained in the legal sources before them – statutes, regulations, precedents and the like – and the arguments of advocates. In the second model, judges vote interdependently; they take into account not only the legal sources and arguments, but also the information contained in the votes of other judges, based on the same sources and arguments. What does the law say about these two models? May judges take into account the votes of colleagues when deciding how to vote themselves? Should they do so? Are there even conditions under which judges must do so? To date, the law has no general theory about how to approach interdependent voting. Each setting is taken on its own terms, and judges muddle through. The problem is that some judges muddle in one direction, some in another, without any consistent approach, either across judges, or across settings.We argue for a presumption that judges not only may but should consider the votes of other judges as relevant evidence or information, unless special circumstances obtain that make the systemic costs of doing so clearly greater than the benefits. Our view is not absolutist; we do not say that judges should always and everywhere consider the votes of other judges. Under certain conditions, it may be better for decisionmakers not to attempt to consider all available information, and we will attempt to indicate what those conditions might be, in this domain. But we will argue that such conditions should not casually be assumed to exist. Interdependence should be the norm, and solipsism the exception, so that unless judges have good reason to do otherwise they should take into account the information contained in other judges’ votes. Our central case is an extended fugue on Chevron-related examples and variants, but we also consider qualified immunity, new rules in habeas corpus, mandamus, and the rule of lenity.

Reconsidering Substantive Canons

This paper provides the first empirical study of the Roberts Court’s use of substantive canons in its statutory interpretation cases. Based on data from 295 statutory interpretation cases decided by the Roberts Court during its first six-and-a-half terms, the paper argues that much of the conventional wisdom about substantive canons of statutory construction is wrong, or at least overstated with respect to the modern Supreme Court. Substantive canons — such as the rule of lenity, the avoidance canon, or the presumption against extraterritorial application of domestic laws — have long been criticized as undemocratic judge-made rules that defeat congressional intent, afford willful judges a convenient vehicle for massaging different meanings out of the same text, and make statutory interpretation unpredictable, because judges invent new canons and reject old ones to suit their changing tastes. Scholars have bemoaned the amount of work that substantive canons perform in statutory interpretation cases and several have charged that textualist judges, in particular, overuse such canons.Whereas most previous studies have focused on the Rehnquist Court, this paper reconsiders the substantive canons in light of new data collected from the Roberts Court. The data show that contrary to the conventional wisdom, substantive canons are infrequently invoked on the modern Court — and that, even when invoked, they rarely play an outcome-determinative role in the Court’s statutory constructions. Indeed substantive canons often are referenced as an afterthought, or add-on argument supplying minimal additional support to an interpretation reached primarily through other interpretive tools. Perhaps most surprisingly, textualist Justices rarely invoke substantive canons in the opinions they author; indeed, intentionalist Justice Stevens leads the Roberts Court in references to such canons.The paper also challenges scholars’ gloomy warnings that Justices in the modern, New-Textualism-influenced era have replaced legislative history with substantive canons as the go-to resource for deciphering ambiguous statutory text. Rather, the data from the Roberts Court show that most of the Justices referenced legislative history at slightly, or even substantially, higher rates than they referenced substantive canons. Moreover, the Court’s own precedents, followed by practical-consequences-based reasoning — rather than substantive canons or legislative history — seem to be the unsung gap-filling mechanisms that the Justices turn to when confronted with unclear statutory text. The paper first reports the findings from my study of 295 Roberts Court cases and then explores the theoretical implications of these findings for several leading statutory interpretation theories and debates.

SEC’s authority to interpret the securities laws comes under fire in criminal enforcement

Purpose – To examine a statement issued by Justice Antonin Scalia on November 10, 2014, concurrently with the Supreme Court ' s denial of certiorari in a criminal insider trading case, which raises profound questions about how the courts interpret the federal securities laws and the degree of deference they give to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the context of criminal enforcement. Design/methodology/approach – The article discusses the points raised in the justice ' s statement and their potential implications for future securities enforcement cases. Findings – The statement suggests that the traditional deference courts accord the SEC under the landmark decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 US 837 (1984) may be inappropriate and potentially inconsistent with the rule of lenity, which requires that ambiguous criminal laws be interpreted in a defendant ' s favor. Originality/value – Expert guidance from experienced securities lawyers.

Lex Mitior: Converse of Ex Post Facto and Window into Criminal Desert

In 2009 New Mexico prospectively repealed the death penalty. Three years later in 2012, New Mexico prosecuted a defendant for a capital murder that was committed before repeal, and it sought to subject him to the death penalty. If state prosecutors had prevailed with the jury, they would have secured the very kind of sentence – death – that state officials had been lauded in Europe for outlawing three years earlier. A prosecution like New Mexico’s could never occur in Europe, and not merely because Europe has long outlawed the death penalty. It could never occur because, in contrast to the law of most American jurisdictions, European states embrace a doctrine known as “lex mitior” (“the milder law”). The latter doctrine is a counterpart to the ex post facto prohibition. Both doctrines both concern retroactivity in criminal law, but they are the converse of one another. The ex post facto doctrine prohibits retroactivity by prohibiting the state from prosecuting persons under criminal statutes that either retroactively criminalize conduct that was hitherto lawful or retroactively increase penalties for conduct that, while unlawful all along, was hitherto punishable less severely. In contrast, lex mitior mandates retroactivity by mandating that criminal defendants receive the retroactive benefits of repealing statutes that either decriminalize conduct altogether or reduce punishments for it. After surveying laws in the United States regarding the retroactive effect of ameliorative repeals, the author addresses whether punishing offenders under harsher laws that obtained at the time of their conduct can serve consequentialist and/or retributive purposes of punishment. He concludes that, although doing can be morally justified under limited circumstances, typically it is not – a conclusion that bears upon lex mitior’s proper scope, whether it consists of a binding norm (as it is among European nations), a nonconstitutional norm (as it presently is within the United States), or, when legislative intent is uncertain, a function of the rule of lenity.

The Merciful Corpus: The Rule of Lenity, Ambiguity and Corpus Linguistics

This article looks to application of the Rule of Lenity by the Supreme Court and lower courts. In particular, it considers four standards articulated by the Supreme Court to determine whether sufficient ambiguity exists to trigger the rule of lenity and looks to how these standards have been applied to either apply or reject application of the Rule of Lenity. Then, Corpus Linguistics is employed in the context of five cases where usage of the Rule of Lenity divided the Supreme Court. Ultimately, this analysis reveals the widely disparate standards employed by Justices and suggests that a large portion of the Court has turned the Rule of Lenity on its head by putting a heavy burden on a defendant seeking to invoke the Rule of Lenity.

Regulatory Crime: Solutions

On November 14, 2013, Professor Dervan was called to testify before the United States House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force. Available here is his written testimony. In his written testimony, Professor Dervan examines the phenomenon of over-criminalization, particularly in the regulatory area, and offers several recommended solutions for Congressional adoption. First, he recommends the adoption of a default rule for mens rea. Second, he recommends the adoption of a default rule applying mens rea to all material elements of an offense. Third, he recommends the codification of the Rule of Lenity. Finally, along with some additional recommendations for consideration, Professor Dervan discusses the role of plea bargaining in the U.S. criminal justice system and encourages the Task Force to more closely examine this issue in the future.

Fair Notice About Fair Notice

The rule of lenity instructs courts to resolve statutory ambiguity in the defendant’s favor. One goal of the rule is to ensure that defendants have fair notice of the scope of criminal prohibitions. While lenity has deep roots in the common law, a majority of state legislatures have passed statutes instructing courts not to follow the rule of lenity in criminal cases. Some state courts abide by the legislature’s lenity-displacing command; others explicitly disregard it; and most have come down somewhere in between — neither disclaiming the rule of lenity entirely nor employing it explicitly. But judges cannot have it both ways. If they try to construe laws to be consistent with the lenity canon’s notice-giving values while avoiding an outright clash with the state legislature, they undermine the very same values that they seek to preserve. After all, if the rule of lenity is meant (at least in part) to ensure that potential criminal defendants are put on notice about the illegality of their actions, then if the courts are not clear about the interpretive method they are using, criminal defendants risk being left in the dark not only about the meaning of a state’s substantive laws, but also about how the courts will decide how to decide what the law means. A rule of lenity whose application is uncertain may be just as problematic from a fair-notice perspective as having no rule of lenity at all.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Reconciling Brown v. Gardner’s Presumption that Interpretive Doubt Be Resolved in Veterans’ Favor with Chevron

In its landmark decision, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), the United States Supreme Court altered the interpretive power balance. Prior to Chevron, courts determined the meaning of ambiguous regulatory statutes; after Chevron, agencies determined the meaning of ambiguous regulatory statutes. Yet this simple truism does not hold within veterans law. Within veterans law, there is a third player who plays an interpretive role: the veteran. The veteran plays an interpretive role because of an unusual presumption identified in Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115 (1994). In Gardner, the Supreme Court directed courts to resolve interpretive doubt in ambiguous statutes in favor of the veterans. This presumption, Gardner's Presumption, is legend in veteran’s jurisprudence; it is raised often by veteran litigants and their counsel, it is cited frequently by the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, by the Federal Circuit, and, even occasionally, by the Supreme Court. Yet Gardner’s Presumption conflicts directly with Chevron’s second step. In Chevron, the Supreme Court directed courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Pursuant to Chevron’s first step, a court should determine whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If Congress has not so spoken, then, under Chevron’s second step, a court must accept any reasonable, agency interpretation. Yet Gardner’s Presumption directs that interpretive doubt be resolved in veterans’ favor. Therein lies the conflict: Which controls when a statute is ambiguous, the agency’s reasonable interpretation or the veteran’s interpretation? To date, none of the courts faced with this conflict have resolved this question successfully; indeed, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims recently asked the Supreme Court for guidance on this very issue; yet, none has been forthcoming. In this article, I answer that plea by exploring and resolving the conflict between Chevron’s second step and Gardner’s Presumption. In so doing, I identify how Gardner’s Presumption began as a liberal construction canon and morphed into the veterans’ trump card that it is today. I also explore how courts have used the presumption in the past and note the solutions that have been offered to date, none of which have proven satisfactory. Finally, I solve the conflict. While this discussion is critically relevant to those involved in veterans law, it is also relevant to anyone applying Chevron and remedial based statutory interpretation canons, such as the rule of lenity or the derogation canon. While Chevron directs that deference is owed any reasonable agency interpretation of an ambiguous statute, remedial canons direct that broad interpretations should control when statutes are ambiguous; how should that conflict be resolved? This article answers that question in the context of veterans law.