When and how should an individual or an institution act in response to extortion? What should an individual or an institution do to oppose tyranny, illegality, oppression, or horror, if we suppose that the consequences of opposition might not be so good or might be terrible? These questions arose in stark form in 2025 in the context of efforts by the Trump administration to punish and bring to heel law firms, individuals, universities, and others.

But in other cases, textualists proceed as if legal texts have an ordinary meaning even when they do not. Judges see a rabbit, or a duck, when other reasonable readers see a duck, or a rabbit. Such judges are “seeing as.” Nonetheless, they insist that they are “seeing that.” They do not think, do not know, and might not even believe, that “someone else could have said of [them]: ‘He is seeing the figure as a…