We're Not All Textualists Now

“We’re all textualists now,” announced Justice Kagan in 2015. In 2022, she rescinded the claim: “It seems I was wrong.” We’re not all textualists. This Article explores the meaning and impact of these two statements. It argues that the first statement was not mere hyperbole; it expressed that there is a significant sense in which modern American legal interpretive culture is textualist. The shared commitment is not a strict textualism, but a thin one; we all start with the text. The 2022 statement alleges that some “textualists” have begun to flout even the thin shared commitment to text. There is substantial uncertainty about whether our judicial interpretive culture will continue to be textualist.