The New Republic has published a long (and critical) review of Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, by Justice Antonin Scalia and legal lexicographer and DSNA member Bryan A. Garner. The reviewer is Judge Richard Posner, a frequent commentator and essayist on legal issues. His review begins by observing that Scalia and Garner "advocate what is best described as textual originalism, because they want judges to 'look for meaning in the governing text, ascribe to that text the meaning that it has borne from its inception, and reject judicial speculation about both the drafters’ extra-textually derived purposes and the desirability of the fair reading’s anticipated consequences.'"
Posner continues: "This austere interpretive method leads to a heavy emphasis on dictionary meanings, in disregard of a wise warning issued by Judge Frank Easterbrook, who though himself a self-declared textualist advises that 'the choice among meanings [of words in statutes] must have a footing more solid than a dictionary—which is a museum of words, an historical catalog rather than a means to decode the work of legislatures.'"
You can read the complete review here.
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