Constitutional avoidance is a legal doctrine in US constitutional law that dictates that US federal courts should refuse to rule on a constitutional issue if the case can be resolved without involving constitutionality. When a federal court is faced with a choice of ruling on a statutory, regulatory, or constitutional basis, the US Supreme Court has instructed the lower court to decide the federal constitutional issue only as a last resort: "The Court will not pass upon a constitutional question although properly presented by the record, if there is also present some other ground upon which the case may be disposed of." Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).