Reading law is an essential guide to anyone who wishes to prevail in a legal argument based on a constitution a statute or a contract the book is calculated to promote valid interpretations if you have lame arguments youll deplore the book if you have strong arguments youll exalt it but whatever your position youll think about law more clearly than ever before. Reading law the interpretation of legal texts antonin scalia bryan a garner thomson west 2012 law 567 pages 1 review in this groundbreaking book scalia and garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional statutory and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases is a burrito a . Well by reading the text and interpreting its words according to how they were understood when the law was created this sounds rather obvious but sadly it is not in american constitutional law scalia and garner lay out their textualist philosophy with seventy canons of interpretation many of these are rather technical eg the eiusdem generis canon but i find it pleasing that at . Reading law is both a description of textualism and an argument in favor of a strong textualist approach and to a lesser extent originalist approach looking to the meaning words had at the time the legal text was drafted as the authors note virtually all interpreters of legal texts at least begin with the text but the authors believe that the correct approach maintains a disciplined