Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution vests all federal legislative power in Congress, while Article I, Section 7 sets forth the process for effectuating this power through passage of legislation by both houses and either presidential approval or veto override. The exercise of the judicial power of the United States often requires that courts construe statutes so enacted to apply them in concrete cases and controversies. Judicial interpretation of a statute is authoritative in the matter before the court, and may guide courts in future cases. Beyond this, the methodologies and approaches taken by the courts in interpreting meaning also can help guide legislative drafters, legislators, implementing agencies, and private parties. This report provides an overview of how the Supreme Court approaches statutory interpretation, with particular emphasis on rules and conventions that focus on the text itself. That is, to inform Congress on how the Court might go about analyzing the meaning of particular legislative language, this report emphasizes "textualist"-based means of interpretation. "Textualism" considers the "law" to be embodied in the language of the statute, construed according to its "plain meaning," which can be discerned through the aid, as necessary, of various judicially developed rules of interpretation. As put by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in an oft-quoted aphorism: "We do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means." "Textualism," as captured in Justice Holmes' quote, eschews explanatory legislative materials, and inferences drawn from them and other extrinsic sources, in applying statutory language to particular circumstances. Despite its currency in recent decades, "textualism" is not the exclusive means of statutory analysis, and this report also briefly discusses "intentionalist"-based means of interpretation and the Court's approach toward relying on legislative history and other extrinsic considerations. This report is not intended as an examination of all schools of judicial decision making, or as an analysis of the merits or limits of the many methodologies used by courts in applying statutes in specific cases. In this regard, even though textualism may be the primary approach toward interpreting statutes, individual Supreme Court opinions often employ multiple types of statutory analysis to support their conclusions and critique majority/dissenting opinions with which they do not agree. Moreover, as general approaches for inferring meaning, neither textualism nor intentionalism is rigidly mechanistic or limited to the action of the enacting Congress, with "textualists," for example, sometimes looking to broader legal contexts and "intentionalists" at times venturing beyond the enacting Congress's particular intent to preserve a statute's purposes. When reading statutory text, the Supreme Court uses content-neutral canons developed by the judiciary that focus on word usage, grammar, syntax and the like. Sometimes, the Court also brings to bear various presumptions that reflect broader judicial concerns and can more directly favor particular substantive results. Other conventions assist the Court in determining whether to go beyond the corners of a statute and judicial-based rules of interpretation to also consider the congressional deliberations that led to a statute's passage. Although there is some overlap and inconsistency among these rules and conventions, and although the Court's pathway through the mix is often not clearly foreseeable, an understanding of interpretational possibilities may nonetheless aid Congress in choosing among various drafting options. To this end, the Court has expressed an interest "that Congress be able to legislate against a background of clear interpretive rules, so that it may know the effect of the language it adopts." Of course, Congress can always amend a statute to supersede the reading given it by the Court. In interpreting statutes, the Court recognizes that legislative power resides in Congress, and that Congress can legislate away interpretations with which it disagrees. Congress has revisited statutory issues fairly frequently to override or counter the Court's interpretations. Corrective amendment can be a lengthy and uncertain process, however. The starting point in construing a statute is the language of the statute itself. The Supreme Court often recites the "plain meaning rule," that, if the language of the statute is plain and unambiguous, it must be applied according to its terms. There is no single test to assay the clarity of statutory language. The interpretive process frequently begins with a narrow focus on the meaning of particular words and phrases. This view is commonly supplemented by perspectives provided from elsewhere within the statute. How has Congress used or distinguished the same terms in other places in the statute? How does the section containing the language at issue fit within the statute's structure? What do the structure and language of a statute reveal about the statute's overall purposes? The primacy of text in statutory analysis would appear to marginalize whatever insight legislative history or other extrinsic aids might provide. The strictures of a text-based "plain meaning rule" were once thought honored more in the breach than in the observance. However, this perception has changed: More often than before, statutory text is thought to be the ending point as well as the starting point for interpretation. Under text-based analysis, the cardinal rule of construction is that the whole statute should be drawn upon as necessary, with its various parts being interpreted within their broader statutory context in a manner that furthers statutory purposes. Justice Scalia, who was in the vanguard of efforts to redirect statutory construction toward statutory text and away from legislative history, has characterized this general approach. "Statutory construction ... is a holistic endeavor. A provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme—because the same terminology is used elsewhere in a context that makes its meaning clear, or because only one of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law." In 1850 Chief Justice Taney described the same process: "In expounding a statute, we must not be guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy." Thus, the meaning of a specific statutory directive may be shaped, for example, by that statute's definitions of terms, by the statute's statement of findings and purposes, by the directive's relationship to other specific directives, by purposes inferred from those directives or from the statute as a whole, and by the statute's overall structure. Beyond this, courts also may look to the broader body of law into which the enactment fits. Nevertheless, realities of the legislative process, including bundled deal making and consolidation of multiple proposals into omnibus bills, may militate against unstinting application of "whole act" or "whole code" methodologies. The Supreme Court often cites general rules, or canons, of construction in resolving statutory meaning. The Court, moreover, presumes "that Congress legislates with knowledge of our basic rules of statutory construction." It is well to keep in mind, however, that the overriding objective of statutory construction has been to effectuate statutory purpose as expressed in a law's text. As Justice Jackson put it 68 years ago, "[h]owever well these rules may serve at times to decipher legislative intent, they long have been subordinated to the doctrine that courts will construe the details of an act in conformity with its dominating general purpose, will read text in the light of context and will interpret the text so far as the meaning of the words fairly permits so as to carry out in particular cases the generally expressed legislative policy." The "language" canons of construction are neutral, analytical guides for discerning the meaning of particular text that might otherwise appear unclear. That is to say, these canons are based on general linguistic principles, many of them of the common-sense variety, for drawing inferences about the meaning of language. The meaning of a word or phrase can be shaped by its ordinary or specialized meaning, its context in the statute, the usage of similar terms in the statute, the statute's structure, and other factors. The language canons are "axioms of experience," but none "preclude[s] consideration of persuasive [contrary] evidence if it exists." Each canon provides its own perspective, and different takes from different views can give different insights into the meaning of what is being observed. Considering and weighing the value of various views would appear to be a sound process for ensuring well-reasoned interpretations. However, the language canons are intrinsic aids only, not "rules of law." Discerning what Congress probably meant by particular language for the purpose of applying it to a particular set of facts can be a difficult judicial exercise that is not amenable to formulaic resolution. The sheer number and variety of canons have been cited to emphasize their limited utility as a stand-alone method of statutory construction. Still influential, for example, is a 1950 article by Professor Karl Llewellyn that lists many canons (both language canons and substantive canons) juxtaposed to equally "correct" but opposing canons. Professor Llewellyn's main point was to argue that judges should take current circumstances into account in applying a statute in a case—he was critical of the impression that "formalism" gave of there being "only one single correct answer possible" in reading text. Nevertheless, many have broadened his message into a charge that canons are mere pretext because judges may pick and choose among them to achieve whatever result they desire. However, accepting that there may be more than one "correct" answer in resolving the meaning of a statutory provision—a premise that seems unremarkable in many cases at the Supreme Court level —does not necessarily mean that a Court majority begins with a preferred policy outcome and then marshals only those canons that support it. Given an array of established templates to guide interpretation, one may be a particularly apt fit in a given case, and the case's outcome will in large measure be driven by the rationale of the canon applied. This might particularly be so when a substantive canon of interpretation (e.g., avoidance of constitutional issues) is in play. (These canons are discussed below.)