Erwin Chemerinsky writes for ABA Journal, Oct. 31, 2017
The Supreme Court increasingly has embraced interpreting statutes based entirely on “plain meaning” of the words and eschewing consideration of legislative history. … The problem with this approach is that the cases that come to the Supreme Court involving statutory construction rarely involve laws where the language has a clear, plain meaning. Instead, the court engages in a fiction: It quotes the ambiguous language, declares that there is a “plain meaning,” and then comes to its desired conclusion.