At Legal Theory Blog, Larry Solum's Legal Theory Lexicon discusses Textualism. From the introduction:
Let’s begin with a basic question: what do we mean when we say “the plain meaning of the text.” A really good answer to that question would require us to develop a theory of meaning in general, but we must avoid that enterprise–at least for the purposes of this post. At one level, the idea of plain meaning is pretty simple. The plain meaning of a legal text is the meaning that would be understood by regular folks who were competent speakers of the language and who knew that they were reading a statute (or court decision, etc.).
But this preliminary formulation is too simple. Some laws are meant for all citizens (e.g., criminal statutes) and some are meant only for specialists (e.g., some sections of the tax code). A text that means one thing in a legal context, might mean something else if it were in a technical manual or a novel. So the plain meaning of a legal text is something like the meaning that would be understood by competent speakers of the natural language in which the text was written who are within the intended readership of the text and who understand that the text is a legal text of a certain type.
And further:
Another way to understand plain meaning is to contrast this idea with others. Here are some:
- Literal Meaning. The literal meaning of a text is provided by its semantic content alone, with no consideration of context. Literal meaning is sparser than plain meaning, because the conventional semantic meaning of many words and phrases is very sparse, with contextual disambiguation or precisification enriching the plain meaning.
- Purposive Meaning. Sometimes we use the word "meaning" to represent the purpose for which a text was written. Purposive interpretation is a rival of textualism.
- Reasonable Meaning: The plain meaning of a text may not be the best meaning (from the perspective of some policy goal or normative theory). The plain meaning of a text may not be the "reasonable"or "desirable" meaning.
Posted at 6:04 AM