Pure textualism’s refusal to try to understand the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to achieve turns the interpretive task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences.
Ketanji Brown Jackson: “Pure textualism’s refusal to try to understand the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to…”
Editor's note · Context
Jackson critiques Gorsuch's textualism as a tool for judicial bias.
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This ruling violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.
I try to be very, very mindful and scrupulous with respect to that because, as you say, our obligation is to be unbiased in our approach.
I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish.
Taking its eye off the ball, the majority misses the Government’s actual objective: to secure our imprimatur for its effort to foment chaos ahead of the November elections.