That’s better than adjusting courts directly---Congress is the best positioned to remedy ambiguities in the statutory scheme.

Judge Friendly expanded on Cardozo's proposal forty years later.94 Friendly objected to statutes that displaced the courts yet contained mistakes that the legislature failed to correct. These mistakes included statutory language that conflicted with likely legislative intent and ambiguous *1292 and vague statutes where there was no real controversy within the legislature about the appropriate clarification.95 Friendly listed seven reasons why the legislature was better positioned to correct statutory mistakes than the courts,96 and he sharply criticized Congress for not making the correction of such mistakes a higher priority.97 But Friendly found Cardozo's notion of a “Ministry of Justice” to smack of an executive department, whereas to Friendly “[i]t would seem elementary that an agency whose task is to formulate legislation and secure its enactment should be attached to the legislature.”98 Friendly envisioned a committee examining all Supreme Court and federal court of appeals decisions, addressing only noncontroversial matters (at least until it had established itself), and supporting rather than supplanting existing congressional committees by doing the work that had been left undone.99

Justice Ginsburg picked up where Friendly left off.100 She, too, focused on statutory mistakes involving noncontroversial issues that Congress tried but failed to resolve when it enacted unintentionally ambiguous *1293 statutory language.101 Ginsburg also agreed that Congress should do the correcting, and she recommended that Congress should “assign[ ] to designated members responsibility to hear judicial pleas for a clear statement of ‘what [Congress] meant (or in any event what it means now).’ ”102 She suggested two bodies that could solicit examples of statutory mistakes and advise concerning possible corrections from all interested parties.103 [FOOTNOTE 103 BEGINS] Ginsburg suggested that the House's Office of the Law Revision Counsel could emphasize statutory clarification. Alternately, Congress could create a new committee to review cases interpreting statutes and to draft proposed statutory amendments if necessary. Id. at 1016 (citing Letter from Justice Stevens to Rep. Kastenmeier (Oct. 25, 1983), reprinted in A Bill to Establish an Intercircuit Panel, and for Other Purposes: Hearings on S. 704 Before the Subcomm. on Courts of the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 99th Cong., 1st Sess. 34-36 (1985)). Ginsburg offered several options regarding the placement and composition of the committee, including separate committees in the House and the Senate, a joint subcommittee of the Judiciary Committees of both chambers, or a committee like that advocated by Judge Friendly that contained members from outside Congress as well. Id. at 1016-17. [FOOTNOTE 103 ENDS]

In short, writing over a span of nearly eighty years, three eminent jurists agreed that statutory mistakes present a problem that should be solved by Congress.104 The details of their preferred solutions varied, but each of their proposals posited the existence of some system for bringing statutory mistakes to the attention of Congress and empowering some body with the responsibility for proposing corrections. Some of those ideas, especially Justice Cardozo's proposals, took root in state law commissions charged with identifying statutory mistakes and recommending changes for the legislature.105 A procedure by which federal courts can notify Congress about statutory mistakes is being developed by Professor Robert Katzmann.106 If successful, that program could make the vision of *1294 Cardozo, Friendly, and Ginsburg a reality. But notifying Congress achieves little if there is no mechanism for Congress to act on the information it receives. That is the function of Corrections Day.