Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The Politics of Originalism
- 2 The Concept of a Living Constitution
- 3 Interpretivism and Originalism
- 4 The Paradox of Originalism
- 5 The Problem of Objectivity
- 6 The Epistemology of Constitutional Discourse (I)
- 7 The Epistemology of Constitutional Discourse (II)
- 8 The Ontology of Constitutional Discourse (I)
- 9 The Ontology of Constitutional Discourse (II)
- 10 Conclusion: The Political Character of Constitutional Discourse
- Index
6 - The Epistemology of Constitutional Discourse (I)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The Politics of Originalism
- 2 The Concept of a Living Constitution
- 3 Interpretivism and Originalism
- 4 The Paradox of Originalism
- 5 The Problem of Objectivity
- 6 The Epistemology of Constitutional Discourse (I)
- 7 The Epistemology of Constitutional Discourse (II)
- 8 The Ontology of Constitutional Discourse (I)
- 9 The Ontology of Constitutional Discourse (II)
- 10 Conclusion: The Political Character of Constitutional Discourse
- Index
Summary
The goal of originalism, we noted at the outset of this discussion, is to uphold the fundamental and widely acknowledged premise of American constitutionalism: The purpose of a written constitution is to bind the future. Recall the words of Sanford Levinson we noted previously:
Constitutions, of the written variety especially, are usefully viewed as a means of freezing time by controlling the future through the “hardness” of language encoded in a monumental document, which is then left for later interpreters to decipher. The purpose of such control is to preserve the particular vision held by constitutional founders and to prevent its overthrow by future generations.
How do we “freeze time” or bind the future? We do this by establishing “the particular vision held by constitutional founders” as normative – that is, as the ground of objectivity – in constitutional interpretation. For hard originalism, the ground of objectivity is authorial intention. In Validity in Interpretation E. D. Hirsch, Jr., defends the concept of “authorial intention” against the theory of semantic autonomy, which maintains that textual meaning is independent of authorial intention, and Hirsch's position when transposed to the context of constitutional interpretation is precisely what I mean by the concept of hard originalism.
According to Hirsch, “once the author had been ruthlessly banished as the determiner of his text's meaning, it very gradually appeared that no adequate principle existed for judging the validity of interpretation.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The American Constitution and the Debate over Originalism , pp. 176 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005