If you mistakenly took the U.S. Code to be the definitive statement of federal law — even in instances in which it happens to depart from the Statutes at Large — be comforted that the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen into the very same error. Writes Will Baude: “Anyway, if you want to read more about this, I highly recommend the short and excellent article by Tobias Dorsey, ‘Some Reflections on Not Reading the Statutes,’ which rocked my world when I was in law school.” His example is the wording over the mode of appointment of the director of the FBI. And he’s right on the Dorsey article, which is really quite a read for shaking up one’s complacency on the subject of statutory interpretation.

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