Textualism

Textualism is a method of legal interpretation that starts and usually ends with the words of a law. A textualist judge asks what the text meant to a reasonable reader when it was enacted, read in light of grammar, ordinary usage, legal terms of art and the structure of the whole statute. Statements of purpose and legislative history, such as committee reports or floor speeches, receive little or no weight.

The approach was championed by Justice Antonin Scalia and is now the dominant way the Supreme Court reads federal statutes. Textualists rely on canons of construction, such as reading a word by the company it keeps or avoiding interpretations that make other words redundant. It is related to but distinct from originalism, which applies a similar focus on fixed meaning to the Constitution.

Supporters say textualism respects separation of powers: only the words passed by Congress and signed by the president are law, so judges should not rewrite them to achieve a goal. Critics argue that text is often ambiguous, that ignoring purpose can produce results Congress never wanted, and that textualists disagree with one another about what words mean in hard cases.