Can't speak to Scalia. Basically all I know of him is that a) he opposed pretty much everything I like and b) dude could WRITE.
I think both of them (Constitutional originalism and Biblical literalism) have a common origin, and that origin includes a narrative of decline.
We poor mortals, or so the story goes, could never match the sheer goodness of those writers, and so we're left trying to argue out the details of what their writings mean and implement them in our daily lives as some sort of a pursuit of purity. (Needless to say, I don't believe this.)
The problem with both cases is that it prevents people from accepting their own opinions or building their own morality, instead preferring rigid adherence to a framework, whether that framework is actually correct or sustainable or usable at all. It privileges the old over the new - which can sometimes be useful but as a reflex, should be examined instead of followed without question - and denies the ability for the world to change past what the writers envisioned. Even in mild cases, it believes the map over the territory.
Even in two hundred years, we've managed to change past what those writers envisioned. We've come up against situations that were flatly impossible when the law was written, and invented a few of them ourselves.
I lean very hard toward constructionism, the same way I lean very hard toward "you gotta make your own morality, because then when the framework fails* you at least know how to debug it."
*and it will. The world is bigger than most people can handle and more complicated than anyone can envision. Demanding it conform to anyone's view - even anyone's collective view - of How It Oughta Be is a good way to take a bruising - believing the map over the territory being a very good way to Wile E. Coyote one's way off a cliff.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-18 03:27 pm (UTC)I think both of them (Constitutional originalism and Biblical literalism) have a common origin, and that origin includes a narrative of decline.
We poor mortals, or so the story goes, could never match the sheer goodness of those writers, and so we're left trying to argue out the details of what their writings mean and implement them in our daily lives as some sort of a pursuit of purity. (Needless to say, I don't believe this.)
The problem with both cases is that it prevents people from accepting their own opinions or building their own morality, instead preferring rigid adherence to a framework, whether that framework is actually correct or sustainable or usable at all. It privileges the old over the new - which can sometimes be useful but as a reflex, should be examined instead of followed without question - and denies the ability for the world to change past what the writers envisioned. Even in mild cases, it believes the map over the territory.
Even in two hundred years, we've managed to change past what those writers envisioned. We've come up against situations that were flatly impossible when the law was written, and invented a few of them ourselves.
I lean very hard toward constructionism, the same way I lean very hard toward "you gotta make your own morality, because then when the framework fails* you at least know how to debug it."
*and it will. The world is bigger than most people can handle and more complicated than anyone can envision. Demanding it conform to anyone's view - even anyone's collective view - of How It Oughta Be is a good way to take a bruising - believing the map over the territory being a very good way to Wile E. Coyote one's way off a cliff.