Where this latter view prevails, where judges are trusted to pursue reason even if occasionally they get it wrong, it is best to understand the literal interpretation of a statute as defeasible, a term we encountered in exploring the common law's methods in Chapter 6. The term, which originally comes from property law and is now frequently found in jurisprudential writing, suggests that there are some circumstances in which a rule or principle or legally indicated outcome might be defeated. In the context of statutory interpretation, therefore, the view would be that the literal interpretation is still the standard and still the approach in the first instance. But not only when the literal interpretation is absurd, but also when the literal interpretation yields an outcome inconsistent with common sense, or inconsistent with probable legislative intention, or inconsistent with the statute's purpose, the judge may depart from literal meaning in order to produce the most reasonable result.

Unknown, Frederick Schauer - Thinkin…, loc. 303