All Dressed Up with Original Meaning and No Where to Go

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

I'm working on the  relatively nouveau distinction between original meaning 
and original  intent, a distinction that in my view will not do the work "the  
new  originalists" set out for it to do.  That said, I'm now interested in  
literature arguing pro or con that if the Founders actually  stated interpretive 
instructions in the Constitution's text, our  interpretation wars would come 
to an end.  For example, Larry Alexander  and Fred Schauer argue that such 
instructions would still be subject  to interpretation and are therefore 
virtually irrelevant to settling the  interpretation wars. (I seem to recall 
Dworkin--and perhaps  others--offering a similar argument.) For my present purposes, 
I'd  welcome titles that reject this point of view and instead insist that  
instructions written into the Constitution would be directly relevant to  the 
resolution of the interpretation wars. Or is that argument so feeble  nobody 
wishes to lay claim to it? Off-list replies are  fine.

Bobby

Robert Justin  Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of  Law
Delaware

Ratio Juris
,  Contributor: _  http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/_ 
(http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/) 
Essentially Contested  America, Editor-In-Chief 
_http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/_ (http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/) 



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