This summer Notre Dame Law school students held over 50 federal and state summer clerkships or internships. Twenty-seven students worked in federal clerkships, with the rest working in state or local clerkships. Law students gained experience with judges throughout the country in district, circuit, appeals, trial, and bankruptcy courts.
In his new article, Reading Statutes in the Common Law Tradition (forthcoming Virginia Law Review), Professor Jeff Pojanowski examines the role common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Jurists and scholars concur that the common law points away from formalist interpretive approaches like textualism and toward a more creative, independent role for courts. Professor Pojanowski notes that they simply differ over whether the common law tradition is worth preserving. Contemporary debate offers a choice between continuing with common law tradition or formalist interpretation that breaks with that heritage.
