Subject:
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Re: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 4 Oct 2002 21:50:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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939 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> > And in fairness, if we're discussing gun-related issues as they apply to
> > 21st century society, I would say that Jefferson doesn't get an opinion,
> > other than as a statement of historical context and, perhaps, as a means to
> > understand original intent (though I'm still not convinced that that's even
> > really possible!).
>
> Jeez, Dave!...
>
> I agree that we can revisit a given question.
Heehee. I should have picked a more hypothetical example! See, my
biggest problem is that I agree with you, but something's not sitting right
with me about it. Not with the right itself, which I honestly think is
pretty straightforward, but just with the way it's commonly argued.
> But if you are going to assert that it's not even possible to know what
> words mean, then you are throwing yourself on the mercy of the court EVERY
> time you have a legal problem. I think one of the problems we have in the
> Supreme Court is the rejection of the understood meanings of things. If the
> Supreme Court is going to be the only arbiter of meanings, and the words of
> the Constition have no commonly understood meaning -- or none that carries
> any legal weight; then we might as well not have the Constitution in the
> first place as none but a specified few can actually be expected to
> understand the meaning of any laws.
I didn't quite mean it that way, but I see how it came out like that.
Durned meanings of words! Anyway, I'm kind of just talking this out so I
can get my brain around it.
You're right, of course, that the Supreme Court isn't any final voice re:
meanings of words, but in practice it seems that they hold considerable
power in interpreting legalese as it abuts the Constitution.
In terms of "intent," I'm really unresolved. One can make a very
persuasive argument that if the authors had "intended" a certain phrase or
meaning or passage to be in the Constitution, they would have put it there.
Or, to put it another way, if they didn't put it in there, then it doesn't
matter what they "intended." To say that Jefferson or any of the others
"intended" to put this or that into the text seems like problematic
second-guessing. Sure, it seems in many cases that we can judge his intent
based on other writings, but what if his opinion changed sometime after he
sent that letter? That's pure speculation, naturally, but it points out the
fact that we really can't *know* the author's intent, and we can only judge
what's written in the canonical document. Even if Jefferson had a 30-volume
diary ennumerating his views about the right to bear arms, I question the
relevance of that writing, since there's a reason it didn't make it into the
final version of the Constitution. Therefore, to assign it relevance (ie,
to put it rhetorically into the Constitution after the fact) is to
second-guess the authors at the precise moment we're trying to revere their
vision.
But I'm still not sure, and Larry was good enough to go over this with me
recently here on ot.debate. I maintain that for fiction writing, the intent
of the author is irrelevant or at least much less important than the
reader's interpretation. How this applies to "real-world" writings is less
clear to me. I'm inclined to say that it's largely the same, but in
practical application that's just not the case. I dunno, I dunno, I dunno.
Of course, you can't really know anything, so it's all based on faith
anyway! 8^)
> This continual chipping away at the significance of meaning and precedence
> worries me. Talk about having blood on the contract...
Worrisome? Sometimes. Inevitable? Just about! At some point the
language of the Constitution will be as irrelevant to the current common
lexicon as the language of the Magna Carta is to us. Then what?
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing"
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| (...) Y'know, let's get away from Jefferson. If we are going to discuss legislative intent in the Constitution we can refer to the Federalist Papers and the many debates that were had state by state. Some of the quotes I provided last time were from (...) (22 years ago, 4-Oct-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing"
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| (...) Jeez, Dave!... I agree that we can revisit a given question. I agree that the historical meaning of the 2nd and 9th Amendments only get at the legislative intent and do not go to stare decisis or what we may do now or in the future (through (...) (22 years ago, 4-Oct-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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