2/5/2021--Back in December, I read a review of The Essential Scalia in the New York Review. The review was by Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman. I sent the letter to the editor below to the Review. Professor Feldman even tried to help me get it published, but the NYR publishes hardly any letters to the editor anymore, let alone one by a non-famous person.
The point of the letter was that originalism gets much too much credit as a theory of interpretation. In practice it is not. That is the point that needs to be emphasized.
****************************************************
To
the Editors:
Professor
Noah Feldman felt he was stuck with the self-professed terms of Justice
Scalia’s jurisprudence in his review of The Essential Scalia [NYR, Dec.
17]. Nevertheless, it was a mistake for him to treat Originalism as if it were
an actual theory of constitutional interpretation. In practice there are no
“principles” of Originalism.
It
is easy to see this. As Professor Feldman points out, a major promise of
Originalism is that it constrains judges from imposing their policy preferences
on the rest of us in the guise of interpreting the Constitution. Therefore, if
conservative Justices abandon originalism in pursuit of ideological
commitments, Originalism would lose any claim of legitimacy, or even coherence.
In
practice, this is what conservative Justices, including Justice Scalia, have
routinely done. Just as examples, Originalism plays no role in free speech
jurisprudence, anti-affirmative action cases or the crucial rules regulating
who can sue for what, known as justiciability. These examples could be
multiplied.
Probably
the most dramatic example of the selective invocation of Originalism is the
line of Free Exercise cases, beginning with Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer,
requiring states to include religious institutions in government spending
programs. As Professor Feldman has shown in his academic writings, this line of
cases amounts almost to anti-Originalism.
The danger of treating Originalism seriously as a theory of interpretation is that it allows conservatives to pretend to neutrality rather than defend their ideological commitments on the merits. As a living constitutionalist myself, I agree with many of the above decisions. But Originalism they are not.
No comments:
Post a Comment