What Divides Textualists from Purposivists?

Recent scholarship has questioned whether there remains a meaningful distinction between modern textualism and purposivism. Purposivists traditionally argued that because Congress passes statutes to achieve some aim, federal judges should enforce the spirit rather than the letter of the law when the two conflict. Textualists, in contrast, have emphasized that federal judges have a constitutional duty to give effect to the duly enacted text (when clear), and not unenacted evidence of legislative purpose. They have further contended that asking how a reasonable person would understand the text is more objective than searching for a complex, multimember body’s purpose. Writing from a textualist perspective, Professor Manning suggests that the conventional grounds for textualism need refinement. Modern textualists acknowledge that statutory language has meaning only in context, and that judges must consider a range of extratextual evidence to ascertain textual meaning. Sophisticated purposivists, moreover, have posited their own “reasonable person” framework to make purposive interpretation more objective. Properly understood, textualism nonetheless remains distinctive because it gives priority to semantic context (evidence about the way a reasonable person uses words) rather than policy context (evidence about the way a reasonable person solves problems). Professor Manning contends that the textualist approach to context is justified because semantic detail alone enables legislators to set meaningful limits on agreed-upon compromises. In contrast, he argues that by authorizing judges to make statutory rules more coherent with their apparent overall purposes, purposivism makes it surpassingly difficult for legislators to define reliable boundary lines for the (often awkward) compromises struck in the legislative process.