It is central to our concept of law that a statute is the primary evidence of its own meaning.
There are innumerable cases where courts say, "The legislature was probably trying to say X, but that's not what the law says and the plain language of law trumps its intent."
Consider the alternative. The courts would be in the position of mind-readers. Everyone who voted for a law had an interpretation/ intent, and all of equal weight to that of the author. So it woud be the average of what undred of people thought they were voting for.
Legislators probably don't all agree what a law means the day it's passed, and their emeories get hazier ad hazier... think what Mitt Romney's current interpretation of Romneycare would be.
So we are guided by the standard judicial rules of legislative interpretation, which begin with that a plain reading of a statute trumps anything else.
Where judicial intent does come up sometimes is in unconstituional laws... if the legislative intent was to deprive rights, for instance. A lot of "moment of silent reflection" laws have been struck down in cases that noted that the proponants talked about the eed for prayer in schools.
But in that case the legislative intent is not being used to determine the meaning of the statute itself.
For meaning the plain language is all of it. If congress accidentally defunded the entire military a court would suggest that congress might want to correct their (presumed) error, but until they did no court would order that money be transferred to the military.
To do so would be to act as a legslature.
A lot of judges have had serious problems with three-time loser laws, saying that the legislature could not have reasonably intended to force them to sentence someone to life for stealing a candy bar three times... but they give the sentence because they have no power to guess at what the legislature meant.
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