Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Religion & Law Blogs -> Constitutionally Correct

Religion & Law

: Constitutionally Correct

Matthew J. Franck: Is originalism dead?

By Alliance Alert

Matthew J. Franck writing at Public Discourse: "No originalist claims that all questions of the Constitution?s original meaning, or of its appropriate application in new settings, are easily answered. But Strauss surely exaggerates the magnitude of these difficulties, and fails to come to grips with the form of originalism that is prevalent today?the search for original meaning, which holds that the text of the Constitution has a meaning of its own, independent of the views (either the intentions or the understandings) of any particular individuals involved in making or ratifying its provisions. The point is to espy the 'regression toward the mean,' as it were: the meaning of a constitutional provision that is the best account that can be given of its principled purpose, in the context of a coherent whole into which it fits as a constituent part, serving the comprehensive intention of the generation responsible for it."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).