A reply to "Hollow Spaces"

We do not maintain that the positions taken by the Restatement on the three issues on which Professor Brower bases his critiques are the only ones that could reasonably have been taken. Certainly, unlike him, we avoid labeling the positions taken by other legal scholars as “incorrect” or “mistaken” or “wrong,” though we may regard as such certain of the legal authorities upon which they rely. We began this essay simply by contesting Professor Brower’s view that the Restatement can and must follow a fixed analytic pathway, a view we would regard as dogmatic. Similarly, while we do not in principle quarrel with his depiction of the proper modes of treaty or statutory construction, we do reject his apparent belief that a correct exercise of them can properly lead to only one—typically strict and, in our view, narrow— reading.