PHIL 2435 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Originalism, Antonin Scalia
Document Summary
Originalists hold that: the meaning of the constitution was determined no later than the time of its ratification. The meaning of the document today is no different that the meaning of it in. How do you determine what the meaning was: the meaning of the document can be determined via a value-free investigation. Interpretation does not involve the making of value judgements. Many originalists are intentionalists - the meaning of the constitution is determined by the intentions of the framers or ratifiers: semantic intention - what i intended to say. You can accept originalism 1, not 2: expectation intention - what i expect to happen as a result of what i say. We don"t want to go by subjective legislative intent. We want to go by objective legislative intent. Scalia is an originalist - he rejects the concept of the living constitution (that the meaning evolves over time) He believes that the meaning was fixed.
