Alito, J., dissenting
community apply shared background conventions for understanding 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 conversant with applicable social conventions would have understood 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 ignoring ... 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 (Independent) 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 enactment. Textualists do not read statutes as if they were messages picked up by a powerful radio telescope from a
