Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
I'd suggest originalism has a stronger tie to precedent than a "living organism" theory as the later suggests open license to change despite precedent.
originalism seems to me to render all precedent both meaningless and useless, since there must logically (by this thought system) be a "true" meaning of each and every law. it also is as much a mantra as anything else to rationalize a political belief.
it also strikes me that seeking out a timeless original itent of the Constitution is tantamount to the creation of a flase God, especially with the two options you've laid out for us -- are we to see the Constitution as inerrent? as having a fixed and definitive meaning? are we to assume that the Constitution, written by many men hundreds of years ago, had an original meaning? how could a diverse group of people such as the founders even have a single intent? if so, can we possibly know what it is 200 years later? and would they have supported originalism?
perhaps things are much more malleable than that, and that the Constitution is designed not to be inerrent or infallable, but that it sought to continuously maximize the pursuit of liberty with an empahsis on coherence and continuity, seeing laws as part of an evolution of society.
let's take the Dread Scott case (which anti-aboritonist love). fidelity to original understandings would logically mean that blacks could not be citizens. this is in line with mainstream thought of slaveholding white landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
i also suppose i'm comfortable living with a law that is in flux and changing and in constant dialogue, rather than a static set of rules. but my world has always been many shades of grey and discourse between contested meanings. i think that herein lies the genius of the Constitution -- it is written in broad terms, and the consistent interpretation reflects society as it is now, keeping us endlessly dynamic and filled with the potential for constant renewal, rather than what meaning might have been in mind in 1789.