Justice Barrett Helps Restore Constitutional Order

Among the most significant opinions issued in this week’s final Supreme Court rulings is Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concurrence in the Court’s invalidation of Biden’s student-loan cancellation (Biden v. Nebraska). As a committed textualist, Justice Barrett rightly perceived the imperative of elaborating on the so-called major-questions doctrine, explaining what it does and does not permit in statutory interpretation.

The student-loan decision manifests that the Court’s conservative majority feels the tension between its avowed statutory textualism and its invocation of a doctrine that is claimed to endorse departures from text — or, at least, from the best interpretation of text. Justice Elena Kagan’s searing criticism of the major-questions doctrine as a “get-out-of-text-free card” clearly left a mark.