A new article in the Yale Law Journal says that the past decade saw a revolution on the subject of interpretive methodology" in Michigan, between textualists and "purposivists". The author believes that Michigan’s textualists (Justices Corrigan, Markman, Young, and former Chief Justice Taylor), "although drawing on federal examples and Justice Scalia’s arguments, diverge significantly from federal textualist theory," and that, as in the other states, they "diverge most dramatically from their federal counterparts by permitting consideration of legislative history once ambiguity is found and holding that substantive canons (for example, the rule of lenity) may be applied only as a 'last resort'.”
The States as Laboratories of Statutory Interpretation: Methodological Consensus and the New Modified Textualism, Abbe Gluck, 119 Yale L.J. 1750 (2010). The full article is here. (PDF)
