In 1950 the great realist jurisprude Karl N. Llewellyn wrote that accepted rules of statutory interpretation - "canons of construction" - led "in happily variant directions." In support he offered a list of twenty-eight pairs of canons, each pair a "thrust" and a "parry" having opposite effect. Llewellyn"s thesis was widely considered devastating to the legitimacy of canons, and for almost half a century academic research on them virtually ceased. In this book Professor Sinclair carefully examines the twenty-eight pairs of "dueling canons," the sources from which they were derived, their historical use in case law and treatises, their intuitive and theoretical justifications, and, critically, their contrariety. Sinclair shows that Llewellyn"s justificatory list contains no real contradictions, nor even inconsistencies of significance, and that his thesis, however monumental, fails. After such general and continuing acceptance of Llewellyn"s argument, these are very strong...