There are many reasons to wonder why a sitting Supreme Court justice would choose to co-author a book called “Over Ruled” arguing that the United States has too many laws.

But the strangest aspect of Neil Gorsuch’s new volume is that it is based on a contradiction. The problem that bothers Gorsuch most is that prosecutors use laws to charge people with crimes in ways their authors never intended, and that is almost entirely a product of textualism, Gorsuch’s favorite method of interpreting statutes.

Textualism is a legal theory that says laws should be interpreted according to their words, not according to their common-sense purpose. As an example, consider the story behind the Yates v. United States Supreme Court 2015, which Over Ruled discusses extensively in its first chapter.

Yates, a commercial fisherman, was criminally charged with catching undersized fish in the Gulf of Mexico and then destroying evidence by dumping those fish. A federal jury convicted Yates on two separate charges. One posed no problems: destroying property to prevent its seizure by federal agents. Yates had no grounds to question this conviction, and he did not do so.

The other charge, the one that reached the Supreme Court, was a serious one. Federal prosecutors accused Yates of violating a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that criminalizes the destruction of “any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation… of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department.” or agency of the United States.” According to prosecutors, the “tangible objects” in question were the fish.

Gorsuch and his co-author, Janie Nitze, are absolutely right to call this impeachment decision flawed. The relevant Sarbanes-Oxley provision, passed in the wake of the Enron scandal, was clearly intended to destroy documents, not throw dead fish overboard.