dents. Further evolution of the law followed from a mode of judicial analysis under which each case was distinguished from preceding ones, if that were possible. Otherwise, stare decisis, the rule of precedent governed.
b. Under the constitutional system which was introduced in America in 1787, the power of judges to make law was circumscribed by the doctrine of separation of powers and by the trend toward codification of the law in statutory codes. In "a government of laws, not of men . . . it is incompatible with democratic government . . . to have the meaning of a law determined by what the lawgiver meant, rather than by what the lawgiver promulgated" (pp. 13 & 17). "it is simply not compatible with democratic theory that laws mean whatever they ought to mean, and that unelected judges decide what that is" (p. 22).
c. Scalia inveighs against the techniques judges have used to avoid giving laws their plain textual meanin
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