Nash for The Hill: Is King v. Burwell exceptional, or harbinger?
In King v. Burwell, the court turned to the statute's purpose to resolve ambiguity. There was a time--the middle of the last century--when resort to a statute's purpose was the courts' primary interpretive tool. This changed with the ascendance of textualism. King casts some doubt on the scope of the time-honored Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council doctrine, and also on the vitality of textualism. Time will tell the extent to which King is an exceptional case on an exceptional topic, or a harbinger of things to come.