How did Antonin Scalia’s use of dictionaries reflect his textualist approach to legal interpretation?

Antonin Scalia’s reliance on dictionaries was a direct extension of his textualist and originalist philosophies, which hold that the meaning of a legal text is fixed at the time of its enactment and should be determined by the common understanding of its words rather than the subjective intentions of its drafters.123

Because Scalia viewed the Constitution and statutes as "dead" documents whose meanings do not evolve, he used dictionaries—particularly older editions like Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934)—to anchor his interpretations in the linguistic context of the era in which a law was created. He believed that consulting these sources helped minimize judicial discretion and prevented judges from imposing their own personal preferences or "judicial activism" on the law.312

However, his approach often led to conflicts over lexicography. In MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1994), Scalia famously criticized Webster’s Third (1961) for including definitions he deemed "intentional distortions" or "careless misuse," arguing that the dictionary’s descriptive approach to language undermined the precision required for legal interpretation.3