(US) Politics over breakfast

[kaberett]

A brought up originalism this morning (very briefly: it's a legal approach to interpretation of the US constitution that views the Constitution's meaning as fixed as of the time of enactment, rising to prominence in the 1980s) as contrasted with the Living Constitution/constructionism.

It seems obvious to me that this is a theological argument at least as much as it's a secular one, in that originalist interpretations are associated with conservatives (notably Scalia) in a way analogous to Biblical literalism (a school of thought arising, ish, in the 18th century) in contrast with exegesis that treats religious texts as living documents that require reinterpretation in light of their present contexts. (I am contrasting "theological" and "secular" there deliberately, rather than "theological" and "legal": for the purposes of this post I'm taking the perspective that the Bible is a text that sets out a system of laws and precedents.)

I'm neither a theological scholar nor a legal scholar (and nor for that matter am I especially familiar with the US politicolegal system beyond the obvious osmosis) so I'm obviously handwaving quite a lot here, but I would be interested in Your Collective Thoughts on the matter, if you have them and feel like talking!

Comments

[sashajwolf]

I have degrees in both theology and law, and AFAICS literalism in theology never seriously occurred to anyone before the so-called Enlightenment, and in law is an eccentricity unique to the British legal system and its colonial derivatives, from which the EU is thankfully gradually managing to prise British judges away. So yeah, I don't think very highly of it in either field, and I also agree that a person who is predisposed to it in one field is likely to be predisposed to it in the other as well, and to be of a generally conservative mindset.