Section 7

Citation: Section 7
Parent Document: Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 2020-06-15
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4760997/bostock-v-clayton-county/ ↗

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community apply shared background conventions for un-
derstanding how particular words are used in particular
contexts.” Manning, The Absurdity Doctrine, 116 Harv. L.
Rev. 2387, 2457 (2003). Therefore, judges should ascribe to
the words of a statute “what a reasonable person conver-
sant with applicable social conventions would have under-
stood them to be adopting.” Manning, 106 Colum. L. Rev.,
at 77. Or, to put the point in slightly different terms, a
judge interpreting a statute should ask “ ‘what one would
ordinarily be understood as saying, given the circumstances
in which one said it.’ ” Manning, 116 Harv. L. Rev., at 2397–
2398.
  Judge Frank Easterbrook has made the same points:
     “Words are arbitrary signs, having meaning only to the
     extent writers and readers share an understanding. . . .
     Language in general, and legislation in particular, is a
     social enterprise to which both speakers and listeners
     contribute, drawing on background understandings
     and the structure and circumstances of the utterance.”
     Herrmann v. Cencom Cable Assocs., Inc., 978 F. 2d 978,
     982 (CA7 1992).
  Consequently, “[s]licing a statute into phrases while ig-
noring . . . the setting of the enactment . . . is a formula for
disaster.” Ibid.; see also Continental Can Co. v. Chicago
Truck Drivers, Helpers and Warehouse Workers Union (In-
dependent) Pension Fund, 916 F. 2d 1154, 1157 (CA7 1990)
(“You don’t have to be Ludwig Wittgenstein or Hans-Georg
Gadamer to know that successful communication depends
on meanings shared by interpretive communities”).
  Thus, when textualism is properly understood, it calls for
an examination of the social context in which a statute was
enacted because this may have an important bearing on
what its words were understood to mean at the time of en-
actment. Textualists do not read statutes as if they were
messages picked up by a powerful radio telescope from a
                  Cite as: 590 U. S. ____ (2020)           25 ALITO, J., dissenting

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