Abstract
Should progressive movement lawyers avoid making textualist arguments? This Essay suggests that the answer is no. While there may be good reasons for movement lawyers to eschew arguments associated with their ideological opponents, none of those reasons apply to the embrace of textualist arguments by progressive movements today. Indeed, the time may be especially ripe for progressive social movements to make increased use of textualist legal arguments. The conclusion that textualist legal arguments ought to be embraced by progressive social movement lawyers has important implications for progressive legal academics. As teachers and scholars, progressive legal academics can play an important role in facilitating— or undermining—the efficacy of progressive textualist arguments in the courts. As such, even for those progressives who may not view textualism as a valuable normative project, there may be utility to engaging seriously with textualism as teachers and scholars.