Originalism and Constitutional construction

Fordham Law Review

Volumn 82, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 453-537

  Solum, Lawrence B ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER   (United States)

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EID: 84890648007     PISSN: 0015704X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (157)

1. E. Allan Farnsworth, "Meaning" in the Law of Contracts, 76 Yale L. J. 939, 940 (1967).
2. This Article builds on prior work exploring the distinction. See Lawrence B. Solum, The Interpretation-Construction Distinction, 27 Const. Comment. 95 (2011).
3. For the role of the distinction in contemporary originalism, see infra Part I. A.2. For examples of the distinction's use by courts and commentators, see infra text accompanying notes 116-25. For a short introduction to the distinction, see Randy E. Barnett, Interpretation and Construction, 34 Harv. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 65 (2011).
4. Tun-Jen Chiang & Lawrence B. Solum, The Interpretation-Construction Distinction in Patent Law, 123 Yale L. J. (forthcoming December 2013), available at http://papers.ssrn. com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=2234193.
5. This view that originalism is a family of theories organized around the Fixation Thesis and the Constraint Principle is widely accepted. See, e.g., Andrew Koppelman, Originalism, Abortion, and the Thirteenth Amendment, 112 Colum. L. Rev. 1917, 1918 n. 2 (2012);
6. see also Jack M. Balkin & David A. Strauss, Response and Colloquy Concerning the Papers by Jack Balkin and David Strauss, 92 B. U. L. Rev. 1271, 1271 (2012);
7. Thomas B. Colby, Originalism and the Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, 107 Nw. U. L. REV. (forthcoming 2013) (manuscript at 1 n. l);
8. Lee J. Strang, An Originalist Theory of Precedent: The Privileged Place of Originalist Precedent, 2010 B. Y. U. L. Rev. 1729, 1729 n. l. The core of originalism, the Fixation Thesis, and the Constraint Principle are discussed in greater depth below.
9. The phrase, "the New Originalism", seems to have been popularized by Keith Whittington. See Keith Whittington, The New Originalism, 2 Geo. J. L. & Pub. Pol'Y 599 (2004). The history of the phrase is recounted below.
10. Numerous other scholars have used the phrase the New Originalism. See Matthew D. Bunker, Originalism 2.0 Meets the First Amendment: The "New Originalism", Interpretive Methodology, and Freedom of Expression, 17 Comm. L. & Pol'y 329 (2012);
11. Thomas B. Colby, The Sacrifice of the New Originalism, 99 GEO. L. J. 713 (2011);
12. Martin H. Redish & Matthew B. Arnould, Judicial Review, Constitutional Interpretation, and the Democratic Dilemma: Proposing a "Controlled Activism" Alternative, 64 Fla. L. Rev. 1485, 1507 (2012) (characterizing New Originalism as embracing constitutional construction);
13. Lawrence Rosenthal, The New Originalism Meets the Fourteenth Amendment: Original Public Meaning and the Problem of Incorporation, 18 J. Contemp. Legal ISSUES 361 (2009);
14. Mark Tushnet, Heller and the New Originalism, 69 Ohio St. L. J. 609 (2008);
15. Daniel Hornal, Why the Demands of Formalism Will Prevent New Originalism from Furthering Conservative Political Goals, crtt: Critical Legal Stud. J. (Summer 2012), http://thecritui.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/spring2/Hornal- Final2.pdf.
16. The idea of translation invoked here is predicated on a distinction between "communicative content" and "legal content." The communicative content of the constitutional text can be translated into corresponding legal content of constitutional doctrine. See generally Lawrence B. Solum, Communicative Content and Legal Content, 89 Notre Dame L. Rev. (forthcoming 2013).
17. Paul Brest, The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding, 60 B. U. L. Rev. 204 (1980) [hereinafter Brest, The Misconceived Quest]. Brest reports that he believes he coined the term. E-mail from Paul Brest, Professor Emeritus, Stanford Law School, to author (Dec. 2, 2009, 6:01 PM) (on file with author).
18. Brest, The Misconceived Quest, supra note 14, at 204.
19. In this Article, we are investigating originalism from the inside, and I simply assume (rather than argue for) the Fixation Thesis. For a defense of the thesis, see Lawrence B. Solum, Should We Be Originalists?, in Robert W. Bennett & Lawrence B. Solum, Constitutional Originalism 36-63 (2011). Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner express the Fixation Thesis as a semantic canon of construction applicable to legal texts in general.
20. See Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 78 (2012) (formulating the "Fixed-Meaning Canon" as, "Words must be given the meaning they had when the text was adopted").
21. "Contribution" names a more general class of relationships between the communicative content of the text and the legal content of constitutional doctrine than does "constraint." The text contributes to doctrine so long as it makes some difference. The text constrains doctrine only if it sets limits on what doctrine is valid-possibly subject to limited defeasibility conditions. See generally The Logic of Legal Requirements: Essays on Defeasibility (Jordi Ferrer Beltran & Giovanni Battista Ratti eds., 2012) (collecting essays that discuss the idea of defeasibility in law).
22. The idea that law is a complex argumentative practice is developed by Dennis Patterson. See Dennis Patterson, Law and Truth 128-50 (1996).
23. Philip Bobbitt, Constitutional Interpretation 12-13 (1991).
24. Stephen M. Griffin, Pluralism in Constitutional Interpretation, 72 TEX. L. Rev. 1753, 1753 (1994) ("Pluralistic theories of constitutional interpretation hold that there are multiple legitimate methods of interpreting the Constitution. ");
25. see also Richard H. Fallon, Jr., A Constructivist Coherence Theory of Constitutional Interpretation, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 1189, 1244-46, 1252-58 (1987) (discussing forms of constitutional argument including text, historical intent, theory, precedent, and value).
26. See generally The Logic of Legal Requirements: Essays on Defeasibility, supra note 20.
27. See Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism and the Unwritten Constitution, 2013 U. ILL. L. Rev. 1935, 1950-53.
28. Requiring that all doctrines of constitutional law be textually bound might entail that are no constitutional backdrops. The idea of a constitutional backdrop is usefully explored in Stephen E. Sachs, Constitutional Backdrops, 80 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1813 (2012).
29. See generally Lorianne Updike Toler, J. Carl Cecere & Don Willett, Pre-'Originalism', 36 Harv. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 277 (2012) (discussing the history of original methods in the courts).
30. An influential account of the history of contemporary originalism is provided in Vasan Kesavan & Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Interpretive Force of the Constitution's Secret Drafting History, 91 GEO. L. J. 1113 (2003).
31. 290 U. S. 398, 448-49 (1934) (Sutherland, J, dissenting).
32. Robert H. Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L. J. 1 (1971).
33. William H. Rehnquist, The Notion of a Living Constitution, 54 Tex. L. Rev. 693 (1976).
34. Raoul Berger, Government by Judiciary (1977).
35. See Edwin Meese III, U. S. Attorney Gen., Speech Before the American Bar Association (July 9, 1985), in The Great Debate: Interpreting Our Written Constitution 1, 1 (Paul G. Cassel ed., 1986);
36. see also Lynette Clemetson, Meese's Influence Looms in Today's Judicial Wars, N. Y. Times, Apr. 17, 2005, at A1;
37. Edwin Meese III, The Case for Originalism, HERITAGE FOUND. (June 6, 2005), http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2005/06/the-case-for- originalisrn.
38. Edwin Meese III, The Supreme Court of the United States: Bulwark of a Limited Constitution, 27 S. Tex. L. Rev. 455, 465-66 (1986).
39. See Brest, The Misconceived Quest, supra note 14.
40. See, e.g., Ronald Dworkin, The Forum of Principle, 56 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 469, 470 (1981);
41. H. Jefferson Powell, The Original Understanding of Original Intent, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 885 (1985).
42. Richard S. Kay, Adherence to the Original Intentions in Constitutional Adjudication: Three Objections and Responses, 82 Nw. U. L. Rev. 226 (1988).
43. Antonin Scalia, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Address by Justice Antonin Scalia Before the Attorney General's Conference on Economic Liberties in Washington, D. C. (June 14, 1986), in U. S. Dep't of Justice, Office of Legal Pol'y, Original Meaning Jurisprudence: A Sourcebook app. C at 101, 106 (1987).
44. See Gary Lawson, Proving the Law, 86 Nw. U. L. Rev. 859, 875 (1992).
45. See Steven G. Calabresi & Saikrishna B. Prakash, The President's Power To Execute the Laws, 104 Yale L. J. 541, 553 (1994).
46. Randy E. Barnett, An Originalism for Nonoriginalists, 5 LOY. L. REV. 611 (1999).
47. See Henry P. Monaghan, Our Perfect Constitution, 56 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 353, 375 n. 130 (1981) ("Although the intention of the ratifiers, not the Framers, is in principle decisive, the difficulties of ascertaining the intent of the ratifiers leaves little choice but to accept the intent of the Framers as a fair reflection of it.");
48. John C. Yoo, The Judicial Safeguards of Federalism, 70 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1311, 1374 (1997) ("To the extent that history matters, it is the original understanding of the ratifiers that we should seek to enforce.");
49. see also Kurt T. Lash, Of Inkblots and Originalism: Historical Ambiguity and the Case of the Ninth Amendment, 31 Harv. J. L. & PUB. Pol'y 467, 467-68 (2008) ("Today the more sophisticated forms of originalism seek the meaning of the text as it was likely understood by those who added the provision to the Constitution. ").
50. John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, Original Methods Originalism: A New Theory of Interpretation and the Case Against Construction, 103 Nw. U. L. REV. 751, 751 (2009).
51. Thomas B. Colby & Peter J. Smith, Living Originalism, 59 DUKE L. J. 239, 239 (2009).
52. By "contextual enrichment", I mean to refer to the same phenomena that are sometimes called "pragmatic enrichment" in the philosophy of language. See generally François Recanti, Pragmatic Enrichment, in Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language 67 (Gillian Russell & Delia Graff Fera eds., 2012).
53. For the purposes of legal theory (and especially constitutional theory), the phrase "pragmatic enrichment" would not communicate well. The distinction between pragmatics and semantics is unfamiliar to most academic lawyers, and the word "pragmatic" is associated with legal pragmatism. See, e.g., Richard A. Posner, Legal Pragmatism Defended, 71 U. Chi. L. Rev. 683 (2004).
54. For a valuable discussion of the role of communicative enrichment, see generally Hrafh Asgeirsson, Textualism, Pragmatic Enrichment, and Objective Communicative Content (Monash Univ. Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2012/21, 2012), available at http://ssrn. com/abstract=2142266.
55. Because communicative content includes both semantic content and the contextual enrichment of that content, criticisms of the interpretation- construction distinction that align context with construction are misplaced if directed against the account of the distinction developed here. See Jessie Hill, Resistance to Constitutional Theory: The Supreme Court, Constitutional Change, and the "Pragmatic Moment", 91 Tex. L. Rev. 1815, 1831-32 (2013). Hill argues, "Choices always must be made among possible meanings, as meaning does not exist without context. All interpretation is also construction. " Id. at 1832. To the extent that Hill refers to the contribution that context makes to communicative content, the substance of her point is correct, but her understanding of "construction" is then identical with the understanding of "interpretation" advanced here. If by "context" she means to refer to normative considerations, then her point is not correct, because it is possible to discern linguistic meaning without giving a text legal effect. Of course, when judges decide cases on the basis of a constitutional provision, they also give that provision legal effect and therefore, consider "context"-if context simply means normative considerations of some kind.
56. For a valuable discussion of the relationship between implicature (a form of contextual enrichment) and constitutional interpretation, see Ryan C. Williams, The Ninth Amendment As a Rule of Construction, 111 Colum. L. Rev. 498, 543-44 (2011).
57. The first occurrence of the phrase "New Originalism" in the Westlaw JLR database is by Evan Nadel. See Evan S. Nadel, The Amended Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 on Appeal: Reconsidering Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corporation, 1996 ANN. Surv. Am. L. 665, 691 n. 191 ("An example of the "textualism" to which I refer is the "New Originalism" theory often associated with Justice Scalia.").
58. Nadel cited William Eskridge, The New Textualism, 37 UCLA L. Rev. 621, 650-56(1990), which discusses Scalia but does not use the terms "originalist" or "originalism." Randy Barnett (without citing Nadel) used the phrase again in 1999.
59. See Paul E. Salamanca, Choice Programs and Market-Based Separationism, 50 BUFF. L. Rev. 817, 931 n. 320 (2002).
60. Keith Whittington used the phrase in a conference paper entitled "The New Originalism" in 2002. See Michael Kent Curtis, Judicial Review and Populism, 38 Wake FOREST L. REV. 313, 318 n. 23 (2003)
61. (citing Keith E. Whittington, Professor, Princeton Univ., The New Originalism (June 8, 2002), available at http://www.aals.org/profdev/ constitutional/whittington.pdf). Whittington's remarks were later published. See Whittington, supra note 9.
62. See Randy E. Barnett, Restoring the Lost Constitution (2004).
63. See Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning (1999) [hereinafter Whittington, Constitutional Construction];
64. Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review (1999) [hereinafter Whittington, Constitutional Interpretation].
65. An early use of the interpretation-construction distinction is found in Robert N. Clinton, Original Understanding, Legal Realism, and the Interpretation of 'This Constitution', 72 Iowa L. Rev. 1177, 1265 (1987).
66. Jack M. Balkin, Abortion and Original Meaning, 24 CONST. COMMENT. 291 (2007).
67. Jack M. Balkin, Original Meaning and Constitutional Redemption, 24 CONST. Comment. 427 (2007).
68. Jack M. Balkin, Living Originalism (2011).
69. See 3 Arthur L. Corbin, Corbin on Contracts §§ 532-35 (1960 & Supp. 1980);
70. Samuel Williston, Contracts §§ 600-02 (3d ed. 1961).
71. See Edwin W. Patterson, The Interpretation and Construction of Contracts, 64 COLUM. L. Rev. 833 (1964);
72. Keith A. Rowley, Contract Construction and Interpretation: From the "Four Corners " to Parol Evidence (and Everything in Between), 69 MlSS. L. J. 73 (1999).
73. Francis Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics 43-44, 111 n. 2 (Roy M. Mersky & J. Myron Jacobstein eds., 1970) (1839). Lieber's definition of construction is related to the definition offered here: "Construction is the drawing of conclusions respecting subjects, that lie beyond the direct expression of the text, from elements known and given in the text-conclusions which are in the spirit, though not within the letter of the text." Id. at 44. For cases using the distinction, see infra notes 116-24 and accompanying text.
74. United States v. Woodley, 726 F.2d 1328, 1329 (1983) ("We are thus called upon to address the inherent tension between the so-called recess appointment clause, which on its face applies to vacancies in any government office, and section 1 of article III which provides that only judges with article III protection may exercise the judicial power of the United States. We are required to decide, in other words, whether the recess appointment power of the President applies to vacancies in the judicial as well as the executive branch of government.").
75. Keith E. Whittington, Constructing a New American Constitution, 27 Const. Comment. 119, 123-24 (2010) ("Arguably, the removal power is an instance of such a gap. The U. S. Constitution specifies how executive branch officials are to be appointed, but does not specify how they are to be removed from office, except by impeachment. The First Congress puzzled over several alternatives as to how officers might be removed and how such removals might be constitutionally justified. The statutes creating the Cabinet departments settled on unilateral presidential removal, but there was little agreement in Congress over the rationale behind that settlement. A removal power is a requisite part of the constitutional scheme.").
76. Originalist Thayerianism is so named because of its affinity to James Thayer's approach to judicial review. Thayer's classic text is James B. Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893).
77. See generally James E. Fleming, Living Originalism and Living Constitutionalism As Moral Readings of the American Constitution, 92 B. U. L. REV. 1171 (2012). Fleming does not describe himself as an originalist.
78. The objection might be stated as follows. The meaning of the constitutional text is radically indeterminate, because any conceivable legal effect can be argued to be consistent with (or required by) that meaning: therefore, "interpretation" cannot do any work in constitutional practice, and hence it cannot be meaningfully distinguished from "construction. " In my view, this objection fails because it is based on a slide from the fact of constitutional underdeterminacy (embraced by proponents of the interpretation-construction distinction) to the unwarranted claim that the law is radically indeterminate (the strong indeterminacy thesis). See generally Lawrence B. Solum, On the Indeterminacy Thesis: Critiquing Critical Dogma, 54 U. Chi. L. Rev. 462 (1987).
79. Roscoe Pound, Law in Books and Law in Action, 44 Am. L. Rev. 12, 32-33 (1910).
80. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 459 (1897).
81. For the connection between Holmes and Pound, see Albert W. Alschuler, The Descending Trail: Holmes' Path of the Law One Hundred Years Later, 49 Fla. L. Rev. 353, 368 (1997);
82. Sanford Levinson, National Loyalty, Communalism, and the Professional Identity of Lawyers, 7 Yale J. L. & Human. 49, 56-57 (1995).
83. See William James, Pragmatism 200 (1907) ("What, in short, is the truth's cashvalue in experiential terms?").
84. E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts § 7. 7, at 478 (1982).
85. Michael Seidman, Constitutional Disobedience (2013).
86. Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) (2008);
87. see also Sanford Levinson, Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (2012).
88. Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (2000).
89. Anand Vaidya, The Epistemology of Modality, Stan. Encyclopedia Phil. (Dec. 5, 2007), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-epistemology/.
90. Philip Bobbitt, Constitutional Fate (1982).
91. By "Living Constitutionalism", I mean to refer to views holding that the legal content of constitutional doctrine changes over time. See generally Lawrence B. Solum, Faith and Fidelity: Originalism and the Possibility of Constitutional Redemption, 91 TEX. L. Rev. 147, 154-62 (elucidating the nature and history of living constitutionalism);
92. The omitted passage and accompanying note refers selectively to the academic literature, citing Whittington, Constitutional Interpretation, supra note 55, Barnett, supra note 54
93. and Jamal Greene, On the Origins of Originalism, 88 TEX. L. REV. 1, 10 (2009).
94. Genetic Fallacy, in THE Oxford COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY (Ted Honderich ed., new ed. 2005).
95. Fausel v. JRJ Enters., Inc., 603 N. W.2d 612, 618 (Iowa 1999).
96. Hostmann v. First Interstate Bank of Ore. (In re XTI Xonix Techs. Inc.), 156 B. R. 821, 829 n. 6 (Bankr. D. Ore. 1993)
97. (citing In re Union Trust Co., 151 N. Y. S. 246, 249 (1915)).
98. Berg v. Hudesman, 801 P.2d 222, 226 (Wash. 1990) (en banc)
99. Grinnell Mut. Reinsurance Co. V. Voeltz, 431 N. W.2d 783, 785 (Iowa 1988)
100. (citing Lonnie's Const. Co. V. Fireman's Fund Ins. Co. Z 227 N. W.2d 207, 210 (Iowa 1975)).
101. Joyner v. Adams, 361 S. E.2d 902, 905 (N. C. Ct. App. 1987)
102. Allen v. Highway Equip. Co., 239 N. W.2d 135, 139 (Iowa 1976).
103. Ram Const. Co. V. Am. States Ins. Co., 749 F.2d 1049, 1053 (3d Cir. 1984).
104. Williams v. Humble Oil & Ref. Co., 432 F.2d 165, 179 (5th Cir. 1970).
105. Chase Nat. Bank v. Chi. Title & Trust Co., 299 N. Y. S. 926, 937-38 (1934)
106. (citing 5 John Henry Wigmore, Evidence § 2464 (2d ed. 1923)).
107. See Andrew B. Coan, The Irrelevance of Writtenness in Constitutional Interpretation, 158 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1025, 1077-83 (2010).
108. see also Joseph M. Perillo, UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts: The Black Letter Text and a Review, 63 Fordham L. Rev. 281, 295 (1994) ("Legal theorists have long distinguished between the interpretation of language (meaning) and its legal effect (construction).") .
109. Roderick M. Hills, Jr., The Pragmatist's View of Constitutional Implementation and Constitutional Meaning, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 173, 175 (2006).
110. There is a large body of literature on default and mandatory rules in contract law. See, e.g., Ian Ayres & Robert Gertner, Filling Gaps in Incomplete Contracts: An Economic Theory of Default Rules, 99 Yale L. J. 87 (1989);
111. Randy E. Barnett, The Sound of Silence: Default Rules and Contractual Consent, 78 Va. L. Rev. 821 (1992);
112. Lawrence B. Solum, The Boundaries of Legal Discourse and the Debate Over Default Rules in Contract Law, 3 S. Cal. Interdisc. L. J. 311 (1993);
113. Stephen J. Ware, Default Rules from Mandatory Rules: Privatizing Law Through Arbitration, 83 Minn. L. Rev. 703 (1999).
114. Mitchell N. Berman, Constitutional Constructions and Constitutional Decision Rules: Thoughts on the Carving of Implementation Space, 27 CONST. Comment. 39, 39 (2010).
115. Mitchell N. Berman, Constitutional Decision Rules, 90 Va. L. Rev. 1 (2004).
116. See Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Supreme Court, 1996 Term-Foreword: Implementing the Constitution, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 54 (1997) (implicitly distinguishing "constitutional interpretation" from "constitutional implementation");
117. See James E. Ryan, Laying Claim to the Constitution: The Promise of New Textualism, 97 Va. L. Rev. 1523, 1544-45 (2011).
118. Roy Sorensen, the prominent philosopher of language, has argued that all vagueness is epistemic. Roy Sorensen, Vagueness and Contradiction (2001). Putting aside ambiguity, gaps, and contradictions, Sorenson's suggestion would entail that every constitutional provision actually provides a bright-line rule that decides every possible case. But the fact that the bright line exists in theory does not entail that we can know where the bright line is located; the rule might remain vague for practical purposes because of our inability to know the exact location of the line it draws: for this reason, the existence of a construction zone is consistent with the thesis that vagueness is epistemic in nature. For practical purposes, epistemic vagueness creates a construction zone, since a line that courts cannot discover cannot operate directly to resolve disputes.
119. The distinction between the general and the particular and the idea that generality has degrees should be distinguished from the related distinction between the abstract and the concrete. See generally Gideon Rosen, Abstract Objects, Stan. Encyclopedia Phil. (Mar. 6, 2012), http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/abstract-objects/ ("Thus it is universally acknowledged that numbers and the other objects of pure mathematics are abstract (if they exist), whereas rocks and trees and human beings are concrete. Some clear cases of abstracta are classes, propositions, concepts, the letter 'A', and Dante's Inferno. Some clear cases of concreta are stars, protons, electromagnetic fields, the chalk tokens of the letter 'A' written on a certain blackboard, and James Joyce's copy of Dante's Inferno").
120. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. V. Sawyer (Steel Seizure), 343 U. S. 579, 634 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring).
121. John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, The Abstract Meaning Fallacy, 2012 U. Ill. L. Rev. 737. McGinnis and Rappaport may have used "abstract" for the concept that is sometimes called "generality."
122. William Blackstone, Commentaries z.ast;59-61.
123. The idea of a division of linguistic labor is usually attributed to Hilary Putnam. See Hilary Putnam, The Meaning of 'Meaning', in 2 Philosophical Papers: Mind, Language and Reality (1985);
124. see also Mark Greenberg, Incomplete Understanding, Deference, and the Content of Thought (UCLA Sch. of Law Pub. Law & Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 07-30, 2007), available at http://ssrn. com/abstract=1030144;
125. Robert Ware, The Division of Linguistic Labor and Speaker Competence, 34 PHIL. Stud. 37 (1978).
126. Lawrence B. Solum, District of Columbia v. Heller and Originalism, 103 Nw. U. L. Rev. 923, 968 (2009).
127. See William S. Blatt, The History of Statutory Interpretation: A Study in Form and Substance, 6 Cardozo L. Rev. 799, 799 (1985).
128. Board v. Cronk, 6 N. J. L. 119, 120 (1822) (emphasis added).
129. See Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Theory Lexicon 026: Rules, Standards, and Principles, LEGAL Theory Lexicon, http://lsolum.typepad.com/legal-theory- lexicon/2004/03/legal-theory-le-3.html (last updated Aug. 18, 2013).
130. James J. Brudney & Corey Ditslear, Canons of Construction and the Elusive Quest for Neutral Reasoning, 58 Vand. L. Rev. 1, 12 (2005) ("Language canons consist of predictive guidelines as to what the legislature likely meant based on its choice of certain words rather than others, or its grammatical configuration of those words in a given sentence, or the relationship between those words and text found in other parts of the same statute or in similar statutes. These canons do not purport to convey a judge's own policy preferences, but rather to give effect to "ordinary" or "common" meaning of the language enacted by the legislature, which in turn is understood to promote the actual or constructive intent of the legislature that enacted such language."). This description of "language canons" strongly suggests that they are canons of "interpretation" in the sense in which interpretation is distinguished from construction.
131. See, e.g., Amy Coney Barrett, Substantive Canons and Faithful Agency, 90 B. U. L. Rev. 109, 109-10 (2010) ("Federal courts have long employed substantive canons of construction to interpret federal statutes. Some substantive canons express a rule of thumb for choosing between equally plausible interpretations of ambiguous text. The rule of lenity is often described this way: it directs that courts interpret ambiguous penal statutes in favor of the defendant. Other canons are more aggressive, permitting a court to forgo a statute's most natural interpretation in favor of a less plausible one more protective of a particular value. For example, a court will strain the text of a statute to avoid deciding a serious constitutional question, and absent a clear statement, it will not interpret an otherwise unqualified statute to subject either the federal government or the states to suit. While courts and commentators sometimes seek to rationalize these and other substantive canons as proxies for congressional intent, it is generally recognized that substantive canons advance policies independent of those expressed in the statute."). Barrett uses the words "construction" and "interpretation" interchangeably, but her description of substantive canons makes it clear that they control legal effect and do not seek meaning.
132. Abbe Gluck has recently explored the idea that some canons of "interpretation" (in the broad sense that includes both interpretation and construction) operate as rules of law. See Abbe R. Gluck, The Federal Common Law of Statutory Interpretation: Erie for the Age of Statutes, 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 753 (2013).
133. Abbe R. Gluck & Lisa Schultz Bressman, Statutory Interpretation from the Inside-An Empirical Study of Congressional Drafting, Delegation, and the Canons: Part I, 65 Stan. L. Rev. 901 (2013). The relevance of Gluck and Bressman's work was suggested by John Ohlendorf.
134. Bernadette Meyler's work is suggestive in this regard. She writes, "Common law originalism regards the strands of eighteenth-century common law not as providing determinate answers that fix the meaning of particular constitutional clauses but instead as supplying the terms of a debate about certain concepts, framing questions for judges but refusing to settle them definitively." Bernadette Meyler, Towards a Common Law Originalism, 59 Stan. L. Rev. 551, 551-58 (2006). Meyler is writing about the common law, but it is at least possible that the situation regarding eighteenth-century methods of interpretation is similar.
135. This thought experiment was suggested by Gary Lawson. Lawson himself introduced a slightly different thought experiment using the "Article VIH" device in a recent article. See Gary Lawson, Dead Document Walking, 92 B. U. L. Rev. 1225, 1234 (2012).
136. See Gary Lawson, On Reading Recipes⋯ and Constitutions, 85 GEO. L. J. 1823, 1823 (1997).
137. See Gary Lawson, Originalism Without Obligation, 93 B. U. L. Rev. 1309, 1313 (2013).
138. Michael Stokes Paulsen, Does the Constitution Prescribe Rules for Its Own Interpretation?, 103 Nw. U. L. Rev. 857 (2009).
139. See Wayne Davis, Implicature, Stan. Encyclopedia Phil. (Sept. 22, 2010), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/;
140. see also Jeffrey Goldsworthy, Constitutional Cultures, Democracy, and Unwritten Principles, 2012 U. Ill. L. Rev. 683, 698;
141. Andrei A. Marmor, Can the Law Imply More Than It Says? On Some Pragmatic Aspects of Strategic Speech, in Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law 83 (Andrei A. Marmor & Scott Soames eds., 2011).
142. See Kent Bach, Conversational Impliciture, 9 Mind & Language 124-62 (1994).
143. I mean "presupposition" in the pragmatic sense. Sometimes "presupposition" is used in a semantic sense to refer to what I call implication. Christopher Potts describes presupposition as follows: "The presuppositions of an utterance are the pieces of information that the speaker assumes (or acts as if she assumes) in order for her utterance to be meaningful in the current context." Christopher Potts, Presupposition and Implicature, in The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory (2d ed. forthcoming) (manuscript at 2), available at http://www.stanford.edu/~cgpotts/manuscripts/ potts-blackwellsemantics.pdf;
144. 1 St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government of the United States;
145. and of the Commonwealth of Virginia 307-08 n. D (Augustus M. Kelley ed., 1969) (1803) (emphasis added);
146. see also Randy E. Barnett, The Ninth Amendment: It Means What It Says, 85 Tex. L. Rev. 1, 69-76 (2006) (discussing this passage from Tucker).
147. See Randy E. Barnett, The Misconceived Assumption About Constitutional Assumptions, 103 Nw. U. L. REV. 615, 622-23 (2009).
148. Thomas B. Colby, The Sacrifice of the New Originalism, 99 GEO. L. J. 713 (2011).
149. "Judicial activism" is an alternative to judicial engagement, but usage of the phrase judicial activism varies and has been disputed. See Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Theory Lexicon 035: Strict Construction and Judicial Activism, Legal Theory Lexicon, http://lsolum.typepad.com/legal-theory-lexicon/ 2004/05/legal-theory-le-3.html (last updated June 18, 2012).
150. See generally Keenan D. Kmiec, The Origin and Current Meanings of "Judicial Activism", 92 Calif. L. Rev. 1441 (2004).
151. Brest, The Misconceived Quest, supra note 14, at 204.
152. See generally Randy E. Bamett, The Original Meaning of the Commerce Clause, 68 U. CHI. L. REV. 101 (2001).
153. Kurt T. Lash, The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part I: "Privileges and Immunities " As an Antebellum Term of Art, 98 Geo. L. J. 1241 (2010)
154. and Kurt T. Lash, The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part II: John Bingham and the Second Draft of the Fourteenth Amendment, 99 GEO. L. J. 329 (2011). Even with respect to this very difficult text, originalists like Lash and Barnett both believe that the original meaning can be recovered.
155. Peter J. Smith, How Different Are Originalism and Non-originalism?', 62 HASTINGS L. J. 707, 722-24 (2011).
156. (citing Mitchell N. Berman, Originalism Is Bunk, 84 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1, 24 (2009)).
157. Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45 (1905).