United States v. Shaw-Mux

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that a Banks analysis “is necessary only for issues of common law — i.e., non-statutory law created by judicial precedent — that this Court has not addressed” (emphasis in original)
• The first step when interpreting a statute is to determine whether the language at issue has a plain and unambiguous meaning ”
• ‘“[W]hen dealing with the interpretation of a Virgin Islands statute, courts must utilize the canons of statutory construction.” (emphasis added)
• “We must look to the context surrounding each statute to determine the Legislature’s intent.”
• use of “shall” creates an obligation “impervious” to discretion (citing Shoy v. People, 55 V.I. 919, 927 (V.I. 2011); 3A Norman J. Singer & J.D. Shambie Singer, Sutherland Statutes & Statutory Construction § 69:4 (7th ed. 2007))
• we must “avoid interpreting [a statutory] provision in a manner that would render it — or another provision — ‘wholly superfluous and without an independent meaning or function of its own’ ” (quoting Defoe v. Phillip, 56 V.I. 109, 129 (V.I. 2012))

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).