(Download) "Towards a Common Law Originalism." by Stanford Law School # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Towards a Common Law Originalism.
- Author : Stanford Law School
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 379 KB
Description
INTRODUCTION The specter of constitutional originalism, an approach once characterized as dead, continues to govern the federal judiciary from beyond the grave. (1) Critics, particularly those arguing for an unwritten constitution or an interpretation of the Constitution as a living document, have hardly been successful in persuading originalists that their vantage point, or cluster of vantage points, is flawed. (2) While the proponents of originalism are far from monolithic in their methods, this Article claims that a central feature of originalist approaches--the resort to a Blackstonian vision of eighteenth-century common law as a backdrop to constitutional interpretation (3)--faces several significant problems. These may not, however, prove fatal to originalism, but rather encourage its metamorphosis into a more dynamic creature, one with appeal both to originalists and living constitutionalists. (4)