Textualism and Originalism in Constitutional Interpretation
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Why the Late Justice Scalia Was Wrong: the Fallacies of Constitutional Textualism
Louisiana State University Law Center LSU Law Digital Commons Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 2017 Why the Late Justice Scalia Was Wrong: The Fallacies of Constitutional Textualism Ken Levy Louisiana State University Law Center, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Fourteenth Amendment Commons Repository Citation Levy, Ken, "Why the Late Justice Scalia Was Wrong: The Fallacies of Constitutional Textualism" (2017). Journal Articles. 413. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/faculty_scholarship/413 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at LSU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of LSU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: Ken Levy, Why the Late Justice Scalia Was Wrong: The Fallacies of Constitutional Textualism, 21 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 45 (2017) Provided by: LSU Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Fri Mar 16 15:53:01 2018 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information Use QR Code reader to send PDF to your smartphone or tablet device WHY THE LATE JUSTICE SCALIA WAS WRONG: THE FALLACIES OF CONSTITUTIONAL TEXTUALISM by Ken Levy * The late justice Scalia emphatically rejected the notion that there is a general "right to privacy" in the Constitution, despite the many cases that have held otherwise over the past several decades. -
The Alchemy of Dissent
Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2010 The Alchemy of Dissent Jamal Greene Columbia Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Jamal Greene, The Alchemy of Dissent, 45 TULSA L. REV. 703 (2010). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/942 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ALCHEMY OF DISSENT Jamal Greene* Stephen M. Feldman, Free Expression and Democracy in America: A History (U. Chi. Press 2008). Pp. 544. $55.00. On July 10, 2010, the Orange/Sullivan County NY 912 Tea Party organized a "Freedom from Tyranny" rally in the sleepy exurb of Middletown, New York. Via the group's online Meetup page, anyone who was "sick of the madness in Washington" and prepared to "[d]efend our freedom from Tyranny" was asked to gather on the grass next to the local Perkins restaurant and Super 8 motel for the afternoon rally.1 Protesters were encouraged to bring their lawn chairs for the picnic and fireworks to follow. There was a time when I would have found an afternoon picnic a surprising response to "Tyranny," but I have since come to expect it. The Tea Party movement that has grown so exponentially in recent years is shrouded in irony. -
Justice Scalia's Bottom-Up Approach to Shaping The
William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal Volume 25 (2016-2017) Issue 1 Article 7 October 2016 Justice Scalia’s Bottom-Up Approach to Shaping the Law Meghan J. Ryan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj Part of the Courts Commons, Legal Biography Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Repository Citation Meghan J. Ryan, Justice Scalia’s Bottom-Up Approach to Shaping the Law, 25 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 297 (2016), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol25/iss1/7 Copyright c 2016 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj JUSTICE SCALIA’S BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO SHAPING THE LAW Meghan J. Ryan * ABSTRACT Justice Antonin Scalia is among the most famous Supreme Court Justices in history. He is known for his originalism and conservative positions, as well as his witty and acerbic legal opinions. One of the reasons Justice Scalia’s opinions are so memorable is his effective use of rhetorical devices, which convey colorful images and understandable ideas. One might expect that such powerful opinions would be effective in shaping the law, but Justice Scalia’s judicial philosophy was often too conservative to persuade a majority of his fellow Justices on the Supreme Court. Fur- ther, his regular criticisms of his Supreme Court colleagues were not conducive to building majority support for his reasoning. Hoping to still have a lasting impact on the law, Justice Scalia seemed to direct his rhetoric at a different audience. -
The Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett
The Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett What’s at Stake? The Separation of Church and State A report from Americans United for Separation of Church and State September 26, 2020 INTRODUCTION Our country was founded on the principle of religious freedom—a tradition and ideal that remains central to who we are today. The separation of church and state is the linchpin of religious freedom and one of the hallmarks of American democracy. It ensures that every American is able to practice their religion or no religion at all, without government interference, as long as they do not harm others. It also means that our government officials, including our judges, can’t favor or disfavor religion or impose their personal religious beliefs on the law. Separation safeguards both religion and government by ensuring that one institution does not control the other, allowing religious diversity in America to flourish. Our Supreme Court must respect this fundamental principle. The American people agree: According to a poll conducted in July of 2019 by Anzalone Liszt Grove Research on behalf of Americans United, 60 percent of likely voters say protecting the separation of religion and government is either one of the most important issues to them personally or very important. Justice Ginsburg was a staunch supporter of the separation of church and state. Yet President Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett, whose record indicates hostility toward church-state separation, to fill her seat. Religious freedom for all Americans hangs in the balance with this nomination. AT STAKE: Whether Religious Exemptions Will Be Used to Harm Others, Undermine Nondiscrimination Laws, and Deny Access to Healthcare Religious freedom is a shield that protects religion, not a sword to harm others or to discriminate. -
A Tale of Two Textualists: a Critical Comparison of Justices Black and Scalia Michael J
College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans 1994 A Tale of Two Textualists: A Critical Comparison of Justices Black and Scalia Michael J. Gerhardt Repository Citation Gerhardt, Michael J., "A Tale of Two Textualists: A Critical Comparison of Justices Black and Scalia" (1994). Faculty Publications. 990. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/990 Copyright c 1994 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs ARTICLES A TALE OF TWO TEXTUALISTS: A CRITICAL COMPARISON OF JUSTICES BLACK AND SCALIA MICHAEL J. GERHARDT* The idea that Justices Hugo Black and Antonin Scalia have anything in common jurisprudentially is counterintuitive. Justice Black is associated with the progressive social and economic legislation symbolized by the New Deal and with judicial activism in protecting the poor and disen franchised.1 He is beloved by many liberals as a champion of individual rights, especially freedom of speech and of the press. In contrast, Justice Scalia is revered by conservatives as a true believer-combating the rising tide of liberalism, big government, and judicial activism-set on restoring traditional notions of federalism and judicial restraint.2 Any effort to liken these two Justices makes both liberals and conservatives recoil. * Professor of Law, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, The College of William and Mary. B.A. Yale University; M.Sc. London School of Economics; J.D. University of Chicago. I am grateful for the encouragement and helpful comments on earlier drafts I received from Marc Arkin, Erwin Chemerinsky, George Cochran, Neal Devins, Jill Fisch, Tracy Higgins, Michael Herz, Sandy Levinson, Chip Lupu, Tracey Maclin, John McGinnis, Peter Shane, Bill Treanor, Steve Wermiel, and Ron Wright. -
How Star Wars Illuminates Constitutional Law
HOW STAR WARS ILLUMINATES CONSTITUTIONAL LAW † CASS R. SUNSTEIN ABSTRACT: Human beings often see coherence and planned design when neither exists. This is so in movies, literature, history, economics, and psychoanalysis – and constitutional law. Contrary to the repeated claims of George Lucas, its principal author, the Star Wars series was hardly planned in advance; it involved a great deal of improvisation and surprise, even to Lucas himself. Serendipity and happenstance, sometimes in the forms of eruptions of new thinking, play a pervasive and overlooked role in the creative imagination, certainly in single authored works, and even more in multi-authored ones extending over time. Serendipity imposes serious demands on the search for coherence in art, literature, history, and law. That search leads many people (including Lucas) to misdescribe the nature of their own creativity and authorship. The misdescription appears to respond to a serious human need for sense-making and pattern-finding, but it is a significant obstacle to understanding and critical reflection. Whether Jedi or Sith, many authors of constitutional law are a lot like the author of Star Wars, disguising the essential nature of their own creative processes. KEYWORDS: Serendipity; Judicial Interpretation; Supreme Court; Chain Novel; Originalism. RESUMO: Os seres humanos frequentemente identificam coerência e planejamento quando nenhum desses elementos sequer existe. Tal situação ocorre nos filmes, na Literatura, na História, na Economia e na † Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University. For valuable comments, I am grateful to Tyler Cowen, Elizabeth Emens, George Loewenstein, Martha Nussbaum, Eric Posner, Mark Tushnet, Adrian Vermeule, and Duncan Watts. This essay draws heavily on an earlier and less academic essay, originally published in The New Rambler (2015). -
Is Textualism Doomed?
RESPONSE IS TEXTUALISM DOOMED? † ILYA SOMIN In response to Jonathan R. Siegel, The Inexorable Radicalization of Tex- tualism, 158 U. PA. L. REV. 117 (2009). In a provocative recent article, Jonathan Siegel argues that textual- ism is ultimately doomed to irrelevance because its “inexorable radica- lization . will cause it to lose the interpretation wars.”1 Siegel con- tends that textualism’s commitment to the “axiom” that “the statutory text is the law” renders it blind to all competing considerations, the- reby forcing textualist judges to enforce “absurd” interpretations of statutes and ones based on “scrivener’s errors.”2 Over time, textualism will “work itself pure,” eliminating any constraints on its inherent log- ic.3 This in turn is likely to make the results of textualism so unattrac- tive that it will lose out to rival approaches such as purposivism and in- tentionalism.4 Siegel has made a compelling argument and identified some poss- ible genuine weaknesses of textualism. I believe he is correct to con- clude that textualism is unlikely to win a decisive victory in the longstanding debate over interpretation. But both his normative cri- tique of textualism and his positive prediction about textualism’s fu- ture are overdrawn. In Part I of this Response, I take issue with elements of Siegel’s normative analysis. I argue that textualism’s adherence to text is † Associate Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law. 1 Jonathan R. Siegel, The Inexorable Radicalization of Textualism, 158 U. PA. L. REV. 117, 178 (2009). 2 Id. at 144-45. 3 Id. at 153. -
Textualism, Contract Theory, and the Interpretation of Treaties
CURTIS J. MAHONEY Treaties as Contracts: Textualism, Contract Theory, and the Interpretation of Treaties ABSTRACT. With the nation's treaty obligations proliferating and foreign affairs cases taking up a growing share of the Supreme Court's docket, it is surprising how undertheorized the field of treaty interpretation remains. To fill this void, some have suggested that textualism, which has had a major impact on statutory interpretation over the past two decades, should be applied to treaty interpretation. This Note rebuts that notion and suggests instead that courts draw from modern contract theory in developing canons of treaty interpretation. AUTHOR. Yale Law School, J.D. zoo6; Harvard College, A.B. 20oo. The author wishes to thank Professor William N. Eskridge, Jr., for introducing him to the field of statutory interpretation and for advising the research project that led to this Note. He also wishes to thank Professor Akhil Amar, Aaron Crowell, Justin Florence, Kate Wiltenburg Todrys, and Kimberly Gahan for their comments on earlier drafts. Finally, he wishes to thank Rebecca Iverson Mahoney for all of her love and support. 824 Imaged with the Permission of Yale Law Journal NOTE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 826 I. STATE OF THE DOCTRINE 827 A. Treaty Interpretation in the Supreme Court 829 B. The Theoretical Problem 833 II. THE CASE FOR TEXTUALISM APPLIED TO TREATIES 834 A. Originalism and Treaty Interpretation 834 B. Public Choice Theory and the Structural Case for Textualism in Statutory Interpretation 838 C. The Structural Argument Applied to Treaty Interpretation 841 D. The Practical Application of Textualism to Treaty Interpretation 844 III. -
Originalist Or Original: the Difficulties of Reconciling Citizens United with Corporate Law History Leo E
Notre Dame Law Review Volume 91 | Issue 3 Article 1 4-2016 Originalist or Original: The Difficulties of Reconciling Citizens United with Corporate Law History Leo E. Strine Jr. Delaware Supreme Court Nicholas Walter Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation 91 Notre Dame L. Rev. 877 (2016) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Notre Dame Law Review at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Notre Dame Law Review by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. \\jciprod01\productn\N\NDL\91-3\NDL301.txt unknown Seq: 1 4-APR-16 13:24 ARTICLES ORIGINALIST OR ORIGINAL: THE DIFFICULTIES OF RECONCILING CITIZENS UNITED WITH CORPORATE LAW HISTORY Leo E. Strine, Jr.* & Nicholas Walter** INTRODUCTION Much has and will continue to be written about the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC.1 In that decision, the Court held that the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the © 2016 Leo E. Strine, Jr. & Nicholas Walter. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice. * Chief Justice, Delaware Supreme Court; Adjunct Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Austin Wakeman Scott Lecturer, Harvard Law School; Senior Fellow, Harvard Program on Corporate Governance; Adjunct Professor, Vanderbilt University School of Law; Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Institute. -
WHAT's the POINT of ORIGINALISM? As of Late, a Remarkable Array of Constitutional Theorists Have Declared Themselves Originali
WHAT’S THE POINT OF ORIGINALISM? DONALD L. DRAKEMAN* I. EMBRACING ORIGINALISM As of late, a remarkable array of constitutional theorists have declared themselves originalists of one sort or another,1 and no one is quite sure why.2 Or, perhaps more accurately, everyone is sure, but they all disagree with each other. For some, the originalism command springs directly from the text itself: it is a written Constitution, and the original meaning of the text itself is the law of the land;3 for others, such as Justice Scalia, it is the best (and perhaps only) way to restrain judges from reading * Ph.D., Princeton University, 1988; J.D., Columbia Law School, 1979; A.B., Dartmouth College, 1975. Visiting Fellow, Program on Church, State & Society, Notre Dame Law School; and Fellow in Health Management, University of Cam- bridge. I would like to thank Joel Alicea, David Campbell, Marc DeGirolami, Richard Ekins, Matthew Franck, Mark Movsesian, Phillip Muñoz, Keith Whitting- ton, Brad Wilson, the fellows of the James Madison Program in American Ideas and Institutions at Princeton University, and the Notre Dame Law School Faculty Colloquium for very helpful comments, and Michael Breidenbach for excellent research assistance. The usual disclaimer applies. 1. See generally Thomas B. Colby & Peter J. Smith, Living Originalism, 59 DUKE L.J. 239 (2009); see also Jeffrey Shulman, The Siren Song of History: Originalism and the Religion Clauses, 27 J.L. & RELIGION 163 (2011) (book review). For a discussion of modern originalism, see Joel Alicea, Forty Years of Originalism, 173 POL’Y REV. 69 (2012) and JACK M. -
The Political Process, Equal Protection, and Substantive Due Process
ARTICLES THE POLITICAL PROCESS, EQUAL PROTECTION, AND SUBSTANTIVE DUE PROCESS Jesse H. Choper* Stephen F. Ross** ABSTRACT In its landmark decision in Carolene Products, the Supreme Court crafted a uniquely American solution to the counter-majoritarian dilemma present in any constitutional democracy: when unelected judges should substantively review policy choices made by elected legislators and executives. The political process theory underlying that decision is that a court with a history of decisions based on judicial ideology should limit close review of government actions to three situations: (1) when the action contravenes a specific provision of the Bill of Rights, (2) when the action threatens to improperly limit the political process, or (3) with regard to the broadly worded Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, when courts determine that the political process does not work normally. The Supreme Court has not faithfully implemented this approach over the years. However, neither Justices nor commentators have developed a superior alternative approach. We believe that most Americans ought to prefer a return to Carolene Products, as superior (either philosophically or because of risk aversion) to leaving important constitutional precedents subject to the vagaries of highly partisan politics. Our approach builds upon insights of Justices Harlan Fiske Stone, Robert Jackson, and Thurgood Marshall. First, courts should consider challenges initially under the Equal Protection Clause. Second, the category of cases warranting heightened judicial scrutiny should be expanded to include those in which claimants can prove that they are excluded from the Madisonian factional “wheeling and dealing” that characterizes ordinary politics. Third, substantive due process claims should remain available, but only where claimants can demonstrate that animus or prejudice precludes their ability to use the political process to redress their grievances. -
Antonin Scalia's Textualism in Philosophy, Theology, and Judicial
Antonin Scalia’s Textualism in philosophy, theology, and judicial interpretation of the Constitution* Herman Philipse** 1. Introduction In his forceful and beautifully written essay ‘A Matter of Interpretation’, Justice Antonin Scalia proposed two interrelated theses, a minor and a major one.1 The minor thesis is a causal or historical conjecture and it says that the great liberty taken by judges of the Supreme Court in interpreting statutes and the Constitution is largely due to the influence of the common-law tradition upon legal training in American law schools.2 According to the major thesis, which is normative, this liberty of interpretation is undesirable, because it infringes upon the separation of powers in a modern democracy. If, under the pretext of interpreting laws, judges of the Supreme Court in fact revise the Constitution and promulgate new laws, they are usurping the legislative power that is exclusively assigned to the legislature. For this reason, the Supreme Court, and indeed all courts, should adopt a method of interpretation called ‘Textualism’ or ‘Originalism’, according to which the aim of judicial interpretation is to establish the original meaning of a statutory text.3 As Justice Scalia urges, the question of whether ‘life-tenured judges are free to revise statutes and constitutions adopted by the people and their representatives’ is ‘a question utterly central to the existence of democratic government’ (p. 133). However, both in the United States and in Europe the vast majority of judges reject Justice’s Scalia’s methodology of Textualism, so that the issue of Textualism is a central controversy in the philosophy of law.