Case Citator › Holly v. Auld

Holly v. Auld

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Abrogated
Court
Supreme Court of Florida
Citation
450 So. 2d 217
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
101 of 101
Citing cases (total)
735
Treatment dates
2022
Abrogated
A reviewed court treats this case as abrogated by later authority. Holly v. Auld was abrogated: all 101 flagged citations have been read, and the one confirmed treatment is listed below. Michael Anthony Conage v. United States rejected as “misleading and outdated” Holly's rule that courts must decide whether statutory language is plain before using interpretive tools, replacing it with a context-first approach that considers textual and structural clues and applicable canons throughout the interpretive process.
More on how this was screened

The other citing opinions followed or applied Holly, quoted its warning that judicial rewriting would be an “abrogation of legislative power,” reported Conage's act in history parentheticals, used treatment language for unrelated authority, or did not cite Holly.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

735 later cases cite Holly v. Auld; 101 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Holly v. Auld?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Abrogated

  • The Supreme Court of Florida rejected Holly's rule that courts must make a threshold plainness determination before using interpretive tools; statutory meaning must instead be assessed in context using all relevant textual and structural clues and applicable canons.

    Michael Anthony Conage v. United States · Supreme Court of Florida · filed

    We believe that the Holly principle is misleading and outdated. More recently our Court has said that judges must “exhaust ‘all the textual and structural clues’ ” that bear on the meaning of a disputed text. Alachua County v. Watson, 333 So. 3d 162, 169 (Fla. 2022) (quoting Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 141 S. Ct. 1474, 1480 (2021)). That is because “[t]he plainness or ambiguity of statutory language is determined by reference to the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole.” Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 341 (1997).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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