Purposivism is a legal theory that a court’s statutory interpretation should reflect the statute’s original purpose. Purposivism assumes that the representatives who created the legislation were reasonable in their intentions. Purposivists look to the policy context of the state when the statute was enacted to help determine the legislator’s purpose. Purposivists may examine a wide array of values, like legislative history, to establish their interpretations. For example, in Riggs v Palmer, the Court used a broad interpretative context, including the public policy objectives, or social purpose, when presiding over a probate case. The Court determined that while the state statute protected the execution of a testator’s will, such execution benefiting the murderer of the testator was not the statute’s purpose.
For more information, please visit the Cornell Law Review Article, Three Symmetries between Textualist and Purposivist Theories of Statutory Interpretation.
[Last updated in July of 2024 by the Wex Definitions Team]