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A Philosophical Investigation Into Methods Of Constitutional Interpretation In The United States And The United Kingdom, Louis E. Wolcher Oct 2005

A Philosophical Investigation Into Methods Of Constitutional Interpretation In The United States And The United Kingdom, Louis E. Wolcher

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Most constitutional theorists in America and Britain are primarily interested in the contents of their respective constitutions. They pay less attention (and in Britain far less attention) to the methods that judges employ to derive those contents, and almost no attention to the philosophical aspects of judges’ interpretive methods. This article attempts to redress this imbalance by giving a distinctly philosophical description of the principal methods of constitutional interpretation that judges are inclined to follow in these two countries, and by developing the important distinction between the interpretation and the reception of a constitutional text. The act of interpretation is …