Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 34.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

3 

BARRETT, J., concurring 

the better reading leads to a disfavored result (like provok-
ing 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, objec-
tively 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,2 it 
is undeniable that they pose “a lot of trouble” for “the honest
textualist.”  Scalia 28. 

—————— 

2 Whether the creation or application of strong-form canons exceeds the 
“judicial Power” conferred by Article III is a difficult question.  On the 
one hand, “federal courts have been developing and applying [such] can-
ons for as long as they have been interpreting statutes,” and that is some 
reason to regard the practice as consistent with the original understand-
ing of the “judicial Power.”  Barrett 155, 176.  Moreover, many strong-
form canons advance constitutional values, which heightens their claim
to legitimacy.  Id., at 168–170.  On the other hand, these canons advance 
constitutional  values  by  imposing  prophylactic  constraints  on  Con-
gress—and that is in tension with the Constitution’s structure.  Id., at 
174,  176.    Thus,  even  assuming  that  the  federal  courts  have  not  over-
stepped by adopting such canons in the past, I am wary of adopting new
ones—and if the major questions doctrine were a newly minted strong-
form  canon,  I  would  not  embrace  it.    In  my  view,  however,  the  major 
questions doctrine is neither new nor a strong-form canon.