Document Type

Speech

Publication Date

1987

Abstract

The question how our Constitution is to be interpreted is a living one for us today, both in the scholarly and in the political domains. Professors argue about "interpretivism" and "originalism" in law journals, they study hermeneutics and deconstruction to determine whether or not interpretation is possible at all, and if so on what premises, and they struggle to create theories that will tell us both what we do in fact and what we ought to do. Politicians and public figures (including Attorney General Edwin Meese) talk in the newspapers and elsewhere about the authority of the "original intention of the Framers," the plain meaning of language, and the like. On all sides this debate largely proceeds as if the questions were new, but of course they are old. In fact, they go all the way back to the beginning.

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