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Seven Short Essays

1) In his 1997 book, A Matter of Interpretation, Justice Antonin Scalia devoted only a small portion of his argument to telling the reader how he would implement his preferred methods of statutory and Constitutional interpretation. He acknowledged that the Supreme Court (and other courts) have been using for many decades methods of interpretation with which he disagreed. However, he said at p. 13 that "acknowledging evil is one thing, and embracing it is something else."

Realistically, the only way his recommended changes will be implemented would be by having a majority of Justices on the Court who share his views. At the moment he can only count on Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas to adhere to his approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation, a group that Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor sometimes join.

To ease the pain of transition and to enhance the stability of the Court's judgments, Scalia would observe the doctrine of stare decisis, the binding nature of prior precedents (p. 140). Although he considers many canons of statutory interpretation as highly artificial and contrary to common sense, he would follow them where they make empirical sense (p. 28). He reassured the reader that he does not take the wording of laws so literally as to eviscerate their true meaning. On p. 24, he said he is a textualist but not "a nihilist."

Scalia acknowledged that some constitutional provisions, such as the First Amendment, must be interpreted anew by subsequent generations because they deal with problems which were not known at the time of the Framers or which have been rendered obsolete by technological advances (p. 140). The electronic media, for example, was unknown in 1787. Nevertheless, he maintained that difficult as the task is to ascertain the original meaning of a constitutional provision, the Court must make the necessary effort to do so. The alternative in his view would be a tyran...

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Seven Short Essays. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:43, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1701519.html