ABSTRACT
Appellate adjudication in the U.S. remains a poorly understood practice. People agree that it is not identical to administrative rulemaking or to the legislative process, but they no longer believe that appellate courts discover law rather than make it. Furthermore, too often people associate appellate adjudication with common law and particularly with private law, despite the fact that appellate courts address legal questions that arise from regulations, statutes, and the Constitution itself—all generally regarded as quintessential areas of public, codified law. In order to appreciate the distinctiveness of appellate adjudication, this article looks to a specific vital function characteristically performed by appellate courts: the engineering of entangled legal concepts. 1
