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Constructing The Constitutional Canon: The Metonymic Evolution Of Federalist 10, Ian C. Bartrum
Constructing The Constitutional Canon: The Metonymic Evolution Of Federalist 10, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This paper is part of larger symposium convened for the 2010 AALS annual meeting. In it I adapt some of my earlier constitutional theoretical work to engage the topic of that symposium: the so-called “interpretation/construction distinction”. I make two related criticisms of the distinction: (1) it relies on a flawed conception of linguistic meaning, and (2) while these flaws may be harmless in the “easy” cases of interpretation, they are much more problematic in the difficult cases of most concern. Thus, I doubt the ultimate utility of the distinction as part of a “true and correct” model of constitutional theory. …
Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor
Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor
Nevada Law Journal
It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. I want to explore this metaphor and the insights it may offer us for better understanding legal interpretation. As in the opening epigraph from James Boyd White, I shall develop the metaphor of the text as window in three ways: the text may be transparent, opaque, or translucent. My goal will be to argue that the best way to understand legal interpretation is to conceive of the legal text as translucent, but along the way I will compare the merits also of considering …