A principal justification for textualism is the constraint hypothesis. Conservative Justices and leading textualist scholars contend that—in stark contrast to reliance on legislative history—focus on the ordinary meaning of enacted text leaves little room for the Justices to be policy-oriented or ideological in their interpretations. This Article represents the first systematic study probing the validity of the constraint hypothesis, one that employs both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The Article examines the Justices’ reliance on interpretive resources in over 660 statutory decisions in the field of labor and employment, decided by the Burger Court, the Rehnquist Court, and the Roberts Court—during the ascendancy of textualism from 1969 to 2024. Decisions involving the employment relationship (comprising roughly one-fourth of the Court’s statutory docket) make them an especially suitable vehicle for addressing whether increased reliance on the textualist resources of ordinary meaning, dictionaries, and language canons, and sharply diminished reliance on the intentionalist resources of legislative history and purpose, have exerted a constraining effect on ideological decision-making.

Using a series of empirical analyses, we find that the textualist approach has had virtually no constraining effect on the ideological predispositions of the Justices. Our findings are especially robust for majorities authored by conservative Justices in the Rehnquist and Roberts eras. By contrast, and somewhat ironically, there is evidence that conservative Justices in the Burger era were constrained ideologically when authoring majorities that relied on legislative history, not when they relied on ordinary meaning and other textualist resources.

The Article then explores in case-specific terms why textualism seems not to constrain ideological decision-making. We focus on Burger Court decisions in which majority and principal dissent relied on legislative history, and Roberts Court decisions where majority and principal dissent relied on the ordinary meaning of text. The Justices’ persistent disagreements in these two eras are precisely parallel: conflicting interpretations of identical words in text (or identical portions of legislative history) and conflicts over which pieces of text (or of legislative history) are correctly applicable. The disagreements illustrate how reliance on these two resources has been similarly malleable in application by the Justices.

The Supreme Court’s guidance function for lower court judges, practicing attorneys, and the public at large, is predicated in important respects on the asserted objectivity and ideological neutrality of textualism. By establishing that such objectivity and neutrality are not promoted by textualist methods in this large subset of the Court’s statutory decisions, and demonstrating the comparable malleability of ordinary meaning and legislative history in the Justices’ opinions, the Article raises serious questions about the privileged position of the textualist approach.

The American consumer bankruptcy system is a costly regime with profound societal implications. Between 2008 and 2023, consumers filed 13.8 million bankruptcy cases across the ninety-four federal bankruptcy districts in the United States, generating over $4 billion in court filing fees alone. When accounting for attorney fees, trustee expenses, creditor costs, and broader economic externalities—such as increased interest rates borne by other consumers—the total financial impact easily reaches tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars.

Against that backdrop, this study uncovers a startling phenomenon: nearly 46% of the consumers who filed bankruptcy in 2023 were repeat filers, defined as individuals with at least one prior bankruptcy record since 1997. This percentage has followed an overall upward trend, increasing at an average annual rate of 52 basis points since 2016.

There are significant geographic disparities in the prevalence of repeat bankruptcy filings. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee has the highest percentage of repeat filers, with 76% of all filings coming from individuals with prior bankruptcy records. In contrast, the Southern District of West Virginia has the lowest percentage, with “only” 36% of filings attributed to repeat filers. Historically, repeat filing has been most common in the South, but by 2023, many jurisdictions outside the region—such as districts in Pennsylvania and Utah—also began to exhibit elevated rates of repeat filings.

These findings challenge foundational assumptions in bankruptcy scholarship and raise urgent policy questions about the system’s efficacy in delivering a true “fresh start” to debtors. At a minimum, this Article calls to revise the estimated number of people benefiting from the bankruptcy system and reevaluate policies designed to address the prevalence of bankruptcy in American society.

As the first comprehensive national study of bankruptcy recidivism that covers both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy, this Article leverages credit report data and court records to reveal novel insights about repeat filers. Contrary to the prevailing narrative that serial filings are driven by bad faith debtors exploiting Chapter 13, the study finds that the majority of repeat filers had previously received a discharge, with nearly half initially filing under Chapter 7. Furthermore, most repeat filings occur after a significant gap—typically exceeding seven years—suggesting that these debtors are not engaging in short-term strategic abuse of the system but are instead grappling with persistent financial instability.

This study also demonstrates that prior bankruptcy filings are a robust predictor of future filings, even after controlling for financial and demographic factors. This means that individuals with a bankruptcy history are disproportionately likely to file again when faced with financial distress compared to those without such a history. As repeat filers account for a growing proportion of all bankruptcy filings, their heightened sensitivity to financial shocks must be considered when evaluating policy changes.

By shifting the focus from short-term Chapter 13 abuse to the broader structural patterns of repeat bankruptcy, this Article offers a novel framework for understanding the long-term dynamics of consumer bankruptcy. These findings can have profound implications for bankruptcy law, financial regulation, and social safety net policies, urging a reevaluation of how the system addresses the enduring financial vulnerabilities of debtors.

Recent developments, including reductions in the federal workforce, effective suspension of certain enforcement activities, and attempted centralization of independent agency rulemaking in the White House, have significantly weakened administrative agencies. This administrative retrenchment is concerning as private enforcement of a number of consumer protection statutes has been simultaneously curtailed through the Supreme Court’s decisions in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins and TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, which dramatically narrowed plaintiffs’ standing. These decisions rely in part on a vision of strong executive authority, positing that broad private standing conflicts with an Article II framework where a politically accountable President faithfully implements laws and exercises coordinated enforcement discretion. When the Executive interprets this discretion so expansively as to effectively nullify enforcement of federal statutory schemes, Congress retains few tools to engage in meaningful lawmaking to advance policies across different domains. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) offer a telling case study: as courts have systematically restricted private enforcement, particularly class actions, they have channeled enforcement toward the CFPB—theoretically positioning the agency to address systemic violations through enforcement, monitoring, and information gathering. While individual consumers may still access state courts or raise FDCPA violations defensively, addressing systemic violations requires robust administrative enforcement if the Article II justification for restricting private standing is to remain coherent. The possibility for such enforcement now faces mounting challenges from increased politicization of enforcement, executive disempowerment of agencies, and growing judicial skepticism about the propriety of independent agencies and their investigative and interpretative authority. The risk is that some consumer protection statutes will become effectively unenforceable as neither private litigation nor state alternatives can adequately fill the resulting enforcement gap.