Courts begin with the statute's text, read in its ordinary meaning at the time it was enacted and in the context of the whole statute; textualists hold that the enacted words are the law.
Most modern law is written by legislatures, through the process you met in how a bill becomes law. So much of a lawyer's work is reading statutes and arguing about what they mean. This unit covers the tools. Every method starts in the same place: the words. You will use IRAC to apply what you find.
🔑 Key idea
Courts begin with the statute's text, read in its ordinary meaning at the time it was enacted and in the context of the whole statute. If the meaning is clear, most judges stop there. Textualists hold that the enacted words are the law.
💡 Why it works
The text is what passed both houses of Congress and was signed by the President (or passed over a veto). Under Article I, only that text became law; private hopes of its authors did not. Reading words as an ordinary reader would at the time also gives fair notice: people can plan by the law's words. Context matters because words take meaning from their surroundings: "bank" means one thing in a banking act and another in a law about rivers. Courts use dictionaries as evidence of ordinary meaning, read defined terms by the statute's own definitions, and give terms of art (words with a settled legal meaning) that technical meaning.
✏️ Worked example: Is a tomato a vegetable?
An 1883 tariff taxed imported vegetables but not fruits. An importer argued tomatoes are botanically fruits. In Nix v. Hedden (1893), how did the Supreme Court decide?
The statute used ordinary words for trade, not scientific terms.
In common speech, tomatoes were served and sold as vegetables.
So "vegetables" in the statute included tomatoes.
Answer: Tomatoes were vegetables under the act: ordinary meaning governed.
✏️ Worked example: Is an airplane a vehicle?
A 1919 federal law punished taking a stolen "motor vehicle" across state lines, defining it to include "any other self-propelled vehicle not designed for running on rails." In McBoyle v. United States (1931), the defendant had flown a stolen airplane. Did the law apply?
In everyday speech of the time, "vehicle" called up things that move on land.
The list in the definition (automobiles, trucks, motorcycles and the like) pointed the same way.
Justice Holmes wrote for the Court that a criminal law should give fair warning in words a common reader would understand.
Answer: No. The Court held an airplane was not a "vehicle" under that statute.
Read the definitions before reaching for a dictionary. Tap the marked phrases.
Some general rules of reading are set by statute too: the federal Dictionary Act (1 U.S.C. § 1) says, for example, that unless context shows otherwise, words in the singular include the plural.
⚠️ Common mistake
Thinking textualism means reading each word alone, as in a dictionary. Textualists read words in context, as a skilled reader of the whole statute would understand them at the time of enactment: definitions, neighboring words, the structure of the act and settled legal meanings all count. Check: before deciding what a word means, read the whole section and the definitions.
This is an educational course, not legal advice.
Practice
Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 2 XP.