Page:Biden v. Nebraska.pdf/34

Rh the better reading leads to a disfavored result (like provoking a serious constitutional question), the court will adopt an inferior-but-tenable reading to avoid it. So to achieve an end protected by a strong-form canon, Congress must close all plausible off ramps.

While many strong-form canons have a long historical pedigree, they are “in significant tension with textualism” insofar as they instruct a court to adopt something other than the statute’s most natural meaning. Barrett 123–124. The usual textualist enterprise involves “hear[ing] the words as they would sound in the mind of a skilled, objectively reasonable user of words.” F. Easterbrook, The Role of Original Intent in Statutory Construction, 11 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 59, 65 (1988). But a strong-form canon “load[s] the dice for or against a particular result” in order to serve a value that the judiciary has chosen to specially protect. A. Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation 27 (1997) (Scalia); see also Barrett 124, 168–169. Even if the judiciary’s adoption of such canons can be reconciled with the Constitution, it is undeniable that they pose “a lot of trouble” for “the honest textualist.” Scalia 28.