"Lawyers torture text and strain credibility every day;" Indeed! I would argue that many issues in society are the direct result of lawyers torturing text.
As to SCOTUS- it has become the most illegitimate branch of government in the modern era. One can understand the obstruction and do-nothingness of Congress based on the political machinations of the parties and actors within. But SCOTUS has become an unrestrained behemoth cloaking their clearly ideological views in a veneer of tortured verbage like "originalism" "textualism" "historicism" and "major questions" "non-delegation" doctrines ! What pure malarky!
These are made up doctrines to front a foregone ideological decision. SCOTUS' conservative majority however, wield or discard these alleged principles as it suits them.
Who are they to decide what is a "major question" and "non delegation" that must be specifically addressed by the legislature? With computers, air travel, and on an on and SCOTUS claims we have to "interpret" based on views from 234 years ago? Uh but only when they want to.
Historicism? Can't pass some firearms regulation in 2023 because the framers wouldn't have done the same in 1790? Never mind that ->historically- women were property and could be beaten or raped by bad husbands- but let's not take away the abuser's handgun because they wouldn't take it in 1790.
Recent decisions by the conservatives from Scalia onward are indeed tortured text discarding their newly made doctrines or twisting them as needed to arrive at the ideological conclusions.
Trump may be a threat NOW - but SCOTUS is a threat long term to the sustainability of our constitutional order
I love these essays and wish the whole country would read them. I will pledge my support At the moment I am a mostly out of work 60-year- old grandmother and baby sitter with an MA in history.
I don’t know what to do to help make sensible change. We have a new Know-nothing Party and the Ancient Party born when rocks were soft and g-d had acne, that looked in the mirror one day to discover they were old. In the mean time they hadn’t trained the next two generations to take the ropes.
Yes. But ain’t it beautiful? Whether uppercase “Office” or lowercase “office” has significance in the SCOTUS’ interpretation of the meaning of the 14th Amendment has been with us since at least 1874 when the Supreme Court in United States v. Hartsel spoke on the matter. We may get a chance to learn more about the topic with the present Court. Whether lawyers get paid or not to consider such things, it is the consideration of such things that makes the practice of law an enjoyable pursuit.
While this is a thought-provoking discussion, the “question of whether the framers of this part of the Constitution were writing for the moment or for the ages” strikes me as sort of a distinction without a difference, since they were certainly doing both. It’s like great art - Shakespeare or Mozart or Rembrandt, etc., may have been appealing to contemporary audiences, making inside references to current people and events, but that doesn’t mean their work isn’t timeless and wasn’t meant to be so.
Legislators, particularly when drafting constitutional amendments, are certainly consiously aiming to make them evergreen while also having their eyes firmly focused on the currently perceived problems they’re trying to solve. There a million things they can’t anticipate in the future but do their best to write them broadly enough to apply to future as well as current predicaments. But yeah, unavoidably, when they write about something like, say, “a well-regulated militia”, it may not make a whole lot of sense some 250 years later...
"Lawyers torture text and strain credibility every day;" Indeed! I would argue that many issues in society are the direct result of lawyers torturing text.
As to SCOTUS- it has become the most illegitimate branch of government in the modern era. One can understand the obstruction and do-nothingness of Congress based on the political machinations of the parties and actors within. But SCOTUS has become an unrestrained behemoth cloaking their clearly ideological views in a veneer of tortured verbage like "originalism" "textualism" "historicism" and "major questions" "non-delegation" doctrines ! What pure malarky!
These are made up doctrines to front a foregone ideological decision. SCOTUS' conservative majority however, wield or discard these alleged principles as it suits them.
Who are they to decide what is a "major question" and "non delegation" that must be specifically addressed by the legislature? With computers, air travel, and on an on and SCOTUS claims we have to "interpret" based on views from 234 years ago? Uh but only when they want to.
Historicism? Can't pass some firearms regulation in 2023 because the framers wouldn't have done the same in 1790? Never mind that ->historically- women were property and could be beaten or raped by bad husbands- but let's not take away the abuser's handgun because they wouldn't take it in 1790.
Recent decisions by the conservatives from Scalia onward are indeed tortured text discarding their newly made doctrines or twisting them as needed to arrive at the ideological conclusions.
Trump may be a threat NOW - but SCOTUS is a threat long term to the sustainability of our constitutional order
I love these essays and wish the whole country would read them. I will pledge my support At the moment I am a mostly out of work 60-year- old grandmother and baby sitter with an MA in history.
I don’t know what to do to help make sensible change. We have a new Know-nothing Party and the Ancient Party born when rocks were soft and g-d had acne, that looked in the mirror one day to discover they were old. In the mean time they hadn’t trained the next two generations to take the ropes.
Yes. But ain’t it beautiful? Whether uppercase “Office” or lowercase “office” has significance in the SCOTUS’ interpretation of the meaning of the 14th Amendment has been with us since at least 1874 when the Supreme Court in United States v. Hartsel spoke on the matter. We may get a chance to learn more about the topic with the present Court. Whether lawyers get paid or not to consider such things, it is the consideration of such things that makes the practice of law an enjoyable pursuit.
While this is a thought-provoking discussion, the “question of whether the framers of this part of the Constitution were writing for the moment or for the ages” strikes me as sort of a distinction without a difference, since they were certainly doing both. It’s like great art - Shakespeare or Mozart or Rembrandt, etc., may have been appealing to contemporary audiences, making inside references to current people and events, but that doesn’t mean their work isn’t timeless and wasn’t meant to be so.
Legislators, particularly when drafting constitutional amendments, are certainly consiously aiming to make them evergreen while also having their eyes firmly focused on the currently perceived problems they’re trying to solve. There a million things they can’t anticipate in the future but do their best to write them broadly enough to apply to future as well as current predicaments. But yeah, unavoidably, when they write about something like, say, “a well-regulated militia”, it may not make a whole lot of sense some 250 years later...