M.D. Rawlings
Classical Liberal
The ultimate irony of this thread, of course, as well as the ultimate hypocrisy of conservatives, is that Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller is the epitome of judicial interpretation – where he fabricated out of whole cloth the right to self-defense and the individual right to possess a handgun pursuant to the right of self-defense.
Now, I agree with Scalia’s ruling in Heller, he made a compelling and successful argument using primary documents and sources from the Foundation Era as the Framers were in essence silent on the issue; where Scalia contrived the doctrine of how Americans perceived the Second Amendment right at the time of its ratification. But his ruling was nonetheless interpretation, where from the text of the Amendment alone there is no evidence as to a right to self-defense or an individual right to possess a firearm.
And I accept Heller as settled and acknowledged precedent because the doctrine of judicial review authorizes the Supreme Court to indeed determine what the Constitution means, as originally intended by the Framers.
The irony (or perhaps the entirely predictable outcome) of this thread is the fact that it's devolved into irrelevant distraction. Obviously the Constitution must be interpreted. Nether side of the "living document" debate disputes that. The question is how should it be interpreted? Should the goal be to understand and represent the intent of those who ratified and amended it (originalism)? Or should the meaning be subject to the values and circumstances of those doing the interpreting?
Another leftist who imagines that the Framers' understanding of reality, the realities of human nature and the imperatives of natural law are no longer valid . . . have somehow faded away--magic!--under the sway of some indefinable whim of modernity, which, in fact, in the final analysis, is nothing more than the relativist baby talk of some imposed on everyone else, statist expediency parading as pragmatism, as old as mankind and still just as deadly.
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