The Law Professors' Brief in King v. Burwell

In the challenge to the Affordable Care Act now under consideration by the Supreme Court, an  amicus curiae brief was filed by law professors William Eskridge, John Ferejohn, Charles Fried, Lisa Marshall Manheim and David Strauss. The brief sets out an account of textualism in statutory construction, contrasting it with “purposivism” – which takes the intentions of legislators to be the touchstone of interpretation. The brief then applies textualist methods in arguing that the government's (the IRS's) interpretation of the disputed language in the ACA should be upheld.

I think that the brief is largely correct about the political theory underlying textualism, the interpretive tenets of textualism, and the application of those tenets to the ACA. I want to examine a few objections from the side of theory.