“WWLHD? (What would the Legislature have done?)”

There’s an old cartoon showing a Senate committee chair addressing his fellow legislators, saying something like, “Must we concern ourselves with what this statute means?  Isn’t that what the courts are for?”

In that vein, Second District, Division Two, Court of Appeal Justice Brian Hoffstadt writes in the Daily Journal about four cases pending in the Supreme Court that will “require[ ] resolving ambiguities in several of the recently amended statutes aimed at criminal justice reform.”  He also suggests a new way to supplement existing mechanisms that “review proposed legislation and . . . ferret out possible ambiguities and constitutional infirmities.”

The four pending cases Justice Hoffstadt discusses are People v. Lopez (see here), People v. Lewis (see here), People v. Williams (see here), and People v. Tirado (see here).