In the Federalist Society Review, Justice Jay Mitchell (Alabama Supreme Court): Textualism in Alabama. From the introduction:
Textualism is alive and well in Alabama. This interpretive doctrine teaches that legal texts have objective meaning and that it is the job of judges to find and apply that meaning. Justice Antonin Scalia and lexicographer Bryan Garner distilled the textualist philosophy and outlined its key operating principles in their seminal treatise Reading Law. But textualist principles are not new—they are time-tested tools that have guided Americans for centuries, including right here in Alabama.
This article seeks to demystify textualism and show how it operates in this state. I begin with a brief introduction to textualism—what it is, where it comes from, and why it’s a foundational part of our legal system. Next, I describe how the court on which I serve, the Alabama Supreme Court, has relied on (or, in some cases, departed from) textualist principles. I then highlight some open questions and gray areas in our caselaw. My hope is that this article will help litigants, attorneys, scholars, and citizens understand how legal interpretation works in Alabama. More broadly, I hope that it inspires non-Alabamians to examine how textualist principles apply in their own states.
Posted at 6:07 AM