Several factors mitigate against the understanding of legal interpretation as seeking the best overall resolution of disputes. First, this understanding would exclude the possibility that legal interpretation can be engaged in by actors who are not resolving specific disputes. It would even exclude the possibility of legal interpretation by an institution in an authoritative opinion whenever the institution is not considering how to resolve a dispute. Second, more importantly, on this understanding of legal interpretation, it would comprise several different activities: ascertaining what the law is; creating so-called decision rules to implement broad legal norms, such as constitutional doctrines; making discretionary decisions not governed by dispositive legal standards, such as fixing criminal sentences under statutes that specify a range of permissible sentences; fashioning new legal standards; figuring out how to resolve disputes when not resolved by applicable first-order legal norms, for example by applying burdens of proof or other closure rules; and deciding whether to depart from the law in cases of exceptional injustice or extraordinary harm. But our paradigm theories of legal interpretation do not even address most of these activities. For example, intentionalism, purposivism, and textualism have nothing to say about how to fix defendants’ sentences within a statutory range, how to fashion new legal standards, and whether to depart from the law in cases of exceptional injustice.