Bill Watson (Cornell University) has posted Textualism and the Meaning of 'Sex': A Reply to Eskridge, Slocum, and Gries on SSEN. Here is the abstract:
A recent article by Professors William N. Eskridge, Brian G. Slocum, and Stefan Th. Gries critically examines textualism, both in general and as applied to the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Although I agree with much of what the authors have to say, some of what they argue misses the mark. In this brief Essay, I contend that the authors mostly criticize strawman varieties of textualism, with the result that much of their article is not addressed to textualism properly understood but to clearly inadequate interpretive approaches that no legal interpreters claim as their own. I also show how the authors' reliance on corpus linguistics to support the Bostock majority's interpretation of Title VII misfires and in fact points to a contrary interpretation.