Federal statutes deal with important subjects such as employment discrimination, antitrust violations, pollution of the environment, securities regulation, and worker safety. Often, however, the meaning of these statutes is unclear and it falls to the Supreme Court to determine Congressional intent. A traditional method of determining Congressional intent was to examine the statute's language and overall purpose as well as its legislative history. Legal scholars from the law and economics movement have challenged the traditional analysis and point out that traditional analytic methods have been abused. Three cases from the 1988-1989 Supreme Court are analyzed in detail to illustrate the debate between Justices who advocate the traditional approach to determining Congressional intent and those who rely on the approach advocated by law and economics proponents.