Law Commons^™

The Place Of History And Philosophy In The Moral Reading Of The American Constitution, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Dworkin argues that commitment to interpretive fidelity requires that we recognize that the Constitution embodies abstract moral principles rather than laying down a particular historical conception, and that interpreting those principles requires fresh judgments of political theory about how they are best understood. This interpretive strategy — Dworkin's ‘moral reading’ of the Constitution — stands in opposition to the narrow originalists' claim that interpretive fidelity requires following the rules laid down by the framers of the Constitution. Some theorists have responded to the originalists by attempting to carve out an intermediate theory between narrow originalism and the moral reading. Dworkin …