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- Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592, 619 Scalia, J., dissenting (en)
- "Textualism as a Nondelegation Doctrine", 97 Colum. L. Rev. 673, 1997, (en)
- Green v. Bock Laundry Mach. Co., 490 U.S. 504, 528 Scalia, J., concurring (en)
- K-Mart v. Cartier, 486 U.S. 281, 319 Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part (en)
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- The statute excludes only merchandise "of foreign manufacture," which the majority says might mean "manufactured by a foreigner" rather than "manufactured in a foreign country." I think not. Words, like syllables, acquire meaning not in isolation but within their context. While looking up the separate word "foreign" in a dictionary might produce the reading the majority suggests, that approach would also interpret the phrase "I have a foreign object in my eye" as referring, perhaps, to something from Italy. The phrase "of foreign manufacture" is a common usage, well understood to mean "manufactured abroad." (en)
- Textualist judges have contended, with much practical impact, that courts should not treat committee reports or sponsors' statements as authoritative evidence of legislative intent. These judges base their resistance to that interpretive practice on two major premises: first, that a 535-member legislature has no "genuine" collective intent concerning the proper resolution of statutory ambiguity ; second, that giving weight to legislative history offends the constitutionally mandated process of bicameralism and presentment. (en)
- Even if we were to assume, however, contrary to all reason, that every constitutional claim is ipso facto more worthy, and every statutory claim less worthy, of judicial review, there would be no basis for writing that preference into a statute that makes no distinction between the two. We have rejected such judicial rewriting of legislation even in the more appealing situation where particular applications of a statute are not merely less desirable but in fact raise "grave constitutional doubts." That, we have said, only permits us to adopt one rather than another permissible reading of the statute, but not, by altering its terms, "to ignore the legislative will in order to avoid constitutional adjudication. (en)
- The meaning of terms on the statute books ought to be determined, not on the basis of which meaning can be shown to have been understood by a larger handful of the Members of Congress; but rather on the basis of which meaning is most in accord with context and ordinary usage, and thus most likely to have been understood by the whole Congress which voted on the words of the statute , and most compatible with the surrounding body of law into which the provision must be integrated – a compatibility that, by a benign fiction, we assume Congress always has in mind. I would not permit any of the historical and legislative material discussed by the Court, or all of it combined, to lead me to a result different from the one that these factors suggest. (en)
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