Ex parte Young ushered in a new era of the American judicial system. Most famously, the decision allowed plaintiffs, in certain circumstances, to sue state officials without having to worry about sovereign immunity. Young’s other holding, though perhaps lesser known, is no less important: individuals, the Supreme Court held, have an equitable cause of action to sue government officials for injunctive relief.

Even today, that second holding remains something of a riddle. Did this cause of action always exist in American law? Or was it an invention of the Young Court? And, at any rate, does the Ex parte Young cause of action have a place among today’s federal court doctrines? This Article does not promise firm answers to these difficult questions. What it does offer, however, is fresh research suggesting that the Ex parte Young cause of action would not have been recognized at the Founding and was instead the product of a gradually developing equitable common law. What’s more, the Article argues, Young fits uncomfortably with modern federal courts jurisprudence, which tends to view non-statutory causes of action (like the one announced by the Young Court) with considerable skepticism.

Should judicial opinions be interpreted with an eye to their purpose, context, or the intent of their authors, or should interpreters focus on the ordinary meaning of the text? Opinions present the same sorts of interpretive puzzles as other legal texts, and yet they have been omitted from the debates over interpretive methodology that dominate the fields of constitutional and statutory interpretation. The omission is no accident: the Supreme Court has stated repeatedly—and with increasing frequency in recent years—that judicial opinions are not to be read like statutes. Yet neither courts nor commentators have explained why the principles that ground judges’ interpretations of other legal texts should not apply to texts judges themselves author.

This Article seeks to fill that gap. It provides a descriptive account of the courts’ use of what I call the “not-statutes trope”—a rhetorical device that invokes a mode of interpretation decidedly different from the textualism that characterizes most statutory interpretation today—and shows how the trope can be employed to finesse the demands of stare decisis. The Article then unpacks and analyzes the reasons that might support an interpretive distinction between judicial opinions and statutes, ultimately concluding that none of the proposed distinctions fully explains the not-statutes trope. The upshot is not that opinions should be parsed in a strictly textualist manner, however. There are good reasons to reject such an approach—reasons that bear a striking resemblance to arguments that have been levied against textualism in statutory interpretation. For textualist judges, then, the challenge is to explain why a mode of interpretation that feels so inappropriate when applied to their own writing should be applied to the work of Congress.

As companies increasingly embrace carbon-neutrality commitments, many rely on the voluntary carbon market to offset their emissions rather than reduce them directly. Regulatory and consumer scrutiny has focused on the widespread use of “phantom” carbon credits, i.e., credits that fail to produce meaningful climate benefits. But less attention has been paid to what this Note terms “colonial” carbon credits: those that may technically reduce emissions but do so at the expense of communities abroad. These projects may contribute to land dispossession, human rights abuses, and threats to public and environmental health. Yet, current regulatory and legal frameworks, with their focus on phantom credits, are ill-equipped to provide remedies for affected communities.

The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) can be a powerful tool for holding actors accountable for human rights abuses occurring outside of U.S. borders. It is true that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, and Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe heightened the requirements for a domestic nexus, thereby whittling away at the ATS’s reach. But these decisions have not foreclosed its use entirely. The direct financial and operational involvement of U.S. corporations in carbon projects distinguishes colonial credit cases from prior ATS litigation concerning traditional supply chains. By examining the structural flaws of the voluntary carbon market, the limitations of existing enforcement actions and consumer litigation, and the evolving ATS doctrine in the wake of Nestlé v. Doe, this Note both argues that the ATS still offers a legal framework for foreign plaintiffs to seek justice, ultimately reframing carbon offsetting as not merely a question of climate effectiveness, but a transnational justice issue necessitating legal accountability.