Either defects are over drafting errors, which are easily solved without new commissions, or they’re over politically charged issues, in which case they can’t be solved at all.

If I could take a crack at that. I guess I feel in somewhat of a unique position. I'm one of the few people who earns a living communicating between Article I and Article III. And I think that we have done a good job of improving the way that communication goes from the Congress to the courts with the creation of the offices of Senate legal counsel and the Office of General Counsel within the House.

With respect to communications going the other way, I find it rather amazing and rather appalling that it appears that the courts are the only people in America who don't know how to communicate with Congress. Congress receives the representations of interest groups on a daily basis. Yet those who are perhaps in the best position to advise Congress of changes that should be made in the law feel this compelling need to remain silent as if it were somewhat stepping out of the judicial mode to communicate with the Congress about a problem with a statute.

It seems to me that it's rather strange that the Judicial Conference, working with Congress, has come up with a way to call Congress's attention to one of their colleagues in the Judicial Discipline Act [Judicial Councils Reform and Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. § 372 (1982)], which can be used to trigger an impeachment inquiry, but has been unable to come up with a way of calling Congress's attention to a problem with a comma. That demonstrates that the system isn't working.

In terms of suggestions, of ways of addressing it, I think that it is important to come up with something that does work within the current committee structure. I think suggestions of using, either creating new separate committees to take on this task within the Congress or using a structure, essentially a staff structure such as the law revision counsel or my office or something like that, are doomed to failure.

The appropriate mechanism would be some form of communication, in the House, with the Speaker who would, just as he refers executive communications from the President to the appropriate committees, could refer these “judicial communications” to the appropriate committees. That would be one way of getting the committees whose statutes are causing an interpretive problem for the courts, obtaining their attention with these particular problems.

Not to belabor the point, but one thing that people should realize is while the study talks about four different types of problems with statutes, it really boils down, I think, for Congress to two types, those that are merely errors of drafting or inadvertence that can quickly be corrected without the necessity for engaging in a new political process of reaching the compromise that's necessary to enact legislation, and then a second category which Congressman Cardin referred to as intended ambiguities, which are questions which the Congress has not been able to achieve the political consensus necessary to write a clear answer.

Simply put, improved communication will not necessarily achieve progress on that second category. If Congress was unable to answer the question the first time, there's not necessarily any reason to believe that they'll be able to reach a consensus and answer it the second. But I *329 think on that first category, which I take it is a significant problem, that this is a problem that is easily soluble.