Understanding Changed Readings: Fidelity and Theory
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University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 1995 Understanding Changed Readings: Fidelity and Theory Lawrence Lessig Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Lawrence Lessig, "Understanding Changed Readings: Fidelity and Theory," 47 Stanford Law Review 395 (1995). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Understanding Changed Readings: Fidelity and Theory Lawrence Lessig* In this article, Professor Lessig proposes a theory to explain how new readings of the Constitution may maintainfidelity with past understandingsof the document's meaning and purpose. After defining schematically some ter- minology for this exercise in "fidelity theory," the authorproposes a general typology of four justificationsfor changed constitutional readings: amend- ment, synthesis, fact translation, and structural translation. Describing this lastjustification as so far overlooked, he illustrates, by way of four historical case studies, how structural translation resultsfrom a pragmatic institutional response by judges to subtle changes in interpretive context-changes both in what ProfessorLessig calls the "uncontested" or backgrounddiscourses of the larger society and, through what he labels the "Erie effect," shifts in law's understandingof its own genesis and nature. In the face of such change, Pro- fessor Lessig argues, legal actors maintain interpretivefidelity only by adapt- ing old readings to new social reality. In Part II of the article, Professor Lessig describes the fact and structural translations he argues underlie the signal constitutionalchange of modern times, the New Deal He considers and rejects the notions that the New Deal was unconstitutional, that it restoredfirst principles that had been lost, that the New Deal was itself a constitutional "amendment, " and that it flowed logically from the collapse of laissez-faire theory. Rather, he argues, the New Deal represents translation,both offact- economic discourse-andof structure-understandingsof the political basis of law. The effects of such contextual changes, ProfessorLessig contends, are both unavoidable and consistent with fidelity. INTRODUCTION ..................................................... 396 I. JUSTIFYING CHANGED READINGS .............................. 401 A. Easy Cases .............................................. 404 B. Justifying Changed Readings: Synthesis ................... 407 C. Justifying Changed Readings: Structural Translation ....... 410 1. Changes: homosexuality .............................. 514 2. Changes: economic theory and due process ............ 419 * Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chicago. Thanks to Bruce Ackerman, Albert AI- schuler, Akhil Reed Amar, Mary Becker, Alexander Blankenagel, Walter Blum, David Currie, Steve Gilles, Craig Goldblatt, Abner Greene, Elena Kagan, Dan Kahan, Alan Meese, Michael McConnell, Anne-Marie Slaughter, David Strauss, Cass Sunstein, and Richard Posner for comments on earlier drafts. I am extremely grateful for research work by Cyrus Amir-Mokri, Bradley Bugdanowitz, and Harold Reeves. The Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Russell Baker Scholars Fund provided support for this research. STANFORD LAW REVIEW [Vol. 47:395 3. Changes: social science and equal protection........... 423 4. Changes: law and the Erie effect. ..................... 426 5. Changes: the response of fidelity ...................... 438 D. Justifying Changed Readings: Summary ................... 442 II. APPLICATIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE NEw DEAL ............... 443 A. The New Deal As Unconstitutional........................ 444 B. The New Deal As Restoration............................. 446 C. The New Deal As Amendment ............................. 448 D. The New Deal As Changed Concepts ...................... 451 E. The New Deal As Translation............................. 453 1. Changes: economic reality ............................ 454 2. Changes: judicial authority ........................... 461 CONCLUSION ....................................................... 472 INTRODUCTION Readings of the Constitution change. This is the brute fact of constitutional history and constitutional interpretation. At one time, the Constitution is read to say one thing. At another, the same text is read to say something else. No theory that ignored these changes, or that presumed that constitutional interpre- tation could go on without these changes, could be a theory of our Constitution. Change is at its core. Are these changed readings always changes of infidelity? Everyone, whether originalist or not, agrees that they are not. We all have the intuition that some changes are consistent with ideals of fidelity, even if some also are not. What we lack is not the sense that change is justifiable, but rather any clear sense of just when, or why.' This is an essay about such change. It is an attempt, within what we could call fidelity theory,2 to understand just how these changes should count within a practice of interpretive fidelity. It is the claim that many (perhaps most) changed readings are consistent with an account of interpretive fidelity. It is a 3 rejection of the view that changed readings mean that "meanings are fluid," and fidelity is bunk. Begin with some examples to suggest the problem: 1. The Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I gives Congress the power "[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Exe- 1. The same point is troubled in Sanford Levinson, Accounting for Constitutional Change, (or, How Many Times Has the United States Constitution Been Amended? (A) <26; (B); 26; (C) >26; (D) All of the Above), 8 CONST. COMMENTARY 409 (1991) (discussing the difference between amendment and interpretation as ways of classifying changed readings). 2. 1 will develop the principle of fidelity below. Suffice it here to say that fidelity is the aim to preserve meaning, intent, or purpose from a distant interpretive context within our own. Fidelity theory describes the conditions under which that achievement is possible. 3. Morton J. Horwitz, The Supreme Court, 1992 Term-Foreword: The Constitution of Change: Legal FundamentalityWithout Fundamentalism, 107 HARv. L. REv. 30, 116 (1993) ("The central prob- lem of modem constitutionalism is how to reconcile the idea of fundamental law with the modernist insight that meanings are fluid and historically changing."). February 1995] FIDELITY AND THEORY cution the foregoing Powers."4 Imagine that a court had to give meaning to the phrase "necessary and proper"-McCulloch v. Maryland,5 of course, says that no court need give it meaning, but imagine, contra McCulloch, that a court had to decide whether a particular measure was "necessary and proper." How would a court decide? Start with the word "proper": Here's a perfectly ordinary argument for a modem American court to make: To decide whether a particular measure adopted by the legislature is "proper" within the meaning of the Necessary and Proper Clause, we must recur to the values of the Framers. Their view of propriety-the collection of values which underlay their understanding of proper government-must deter- mine whether a measure is proper. It is not for a court to look to the current views of propriety to update the Constitution's meaning. What is "proper" in the sense in which the Constitution speaks is just what was viewed as proper when the Framers used that word. It is perfectly ordinary for a court to ignore changing values of propriety when applying this old text in this context. So why, then, is the following not equally an accepted argument within current legal discourse? To decide whether a measure adopted by the legislature is "necessary" within the meaning of the Necessary and Proper Clause, we must recur to the facts as understood by the Framers. Their view of nature-their collection of opinions about the nature of the world and how the world functions-must determine a measure's necessity. It is not for a court to invoke modem science to update the Constitution's meaning. What is "necessary" in the constitutional sense is simply what was viewed as necessary when the Framers used that word. It is perfectly absurd for a court to ignore changing views of necessity when applying this old text in this context. But why, we might ask, must a court recognize changing understandings of the facts but ignore changing under- standings of values?6 Why is a changed reading tracking facts permitted, but a changed reading tracking values not? 2. In County of Riverside v. McLaughlin,7 the Supreme Court revisited the question of how long police could hold a warrantless arrestee without present- ing him to a magistrate. Gerstein v. Pugh had decided that the presentation must be made "promptly." 8 The question in Riverside was how "promptly" was prompt enough. Five members of the Court held that forty-eight hours was 4. U.S. CONST. art.I, § 8, cl.18. 5. 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316,355 (1819) (giving Congress great deference in interpreting "necessary and proper"). 6. Compare Thurman Arnold's similar point: The principles of Washington's farewell address are still sources of wisdom when cures for social ills are sought. The methods of Washington's physician, however, are no