For forty-one years I have worked (for thirteen years) as a federal court of appeals judge and (for twenty-eight years) as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. My job was interpreting statutes - that is, laws - and the Constitution. On the court of appeals, I reviewed the decisions of trial courts, and on the Supreme Court I reviewed the decisions of courts of appeals and state supreme courts. My work, like that of almost all federal appellate judges, had consisted primarily of reading documents and helping to decide what they mean and how they apply to thee facts before the Court in a particular case. Unlike trial court judges, who hear cases for the first time, appellate judges do not try cases and rarely review evidence. Appellate judges are most often concerned with making sure the trial courts correctly interpreted and applied the law to the facts of the cases in front of them. -Preface, My Way

Judges have traditionally used a variety of tools to help them determine the proper interpretation of the language of statutes and of the Constitution. These have included text, history, precedent, tradition, purposes, values, and consequences relevant to those purposes. These are not all the interpretive tools a judge might use, and I discuss other related tools below. For now, I repeat the words of Chief Justice Marshall, that "where the main labours to discover the design of the legislature, it seizes every thing from which aid can be derived." Aside from reading the text itself, there is no specified rank order among these tools. Which is these many tools proves more helpful depends upon the particular case. -Chapter 1: Purpose vs. Textualism