The Texas Supreme Court has said that “text is determinative” in statutory interpretation. See BankDirect Capital Fin., LLC v. Plasma Fab, LLC, 519 S.W.3d 76, 80 (Tex. 2017). The U.S. Supreme Court agrees. Corner Post, Inc. v. Bd. of Governors of Fed. Reserve Sys., 603 U.S. 799, 815 (2024) (“[T]he text of a law controls over purported legislative intentions unmoored from any statutory text; the Court may not replace the actual text with speculation as to Congress’ intent.”) (citations omitted). Indeed, at least lip service to textualism is uncontroversial relative to a few decades ago; U.S. Supreme Court justices have stated that “we’re all textualists now in a way that was just not remotely true” decades earlier. Thomas W. Merrill et al., Text over Intent & the Demise of Legislative History, 43 Dayton L. Rev. 103, 105 (2018).

So why publish an article about how to locate and apply legislative history? The answer is both substantive and practical.

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