Scalia’s shameless political agenda

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:53:00 +0000

SHOULD THE TERM "sandwiches" in a commercial lease include "tacos, burritos and quesadillas"? Does the U.S. Constitution include a right of privacy encompassing abortion? From the mundane to the fundamental, every day we ask our courts to interpret legal documents, legislation and the Constitution itself. But how should courts decide what the text of a document means? Are there agreed upon standards that all courts should use in approaching this task?

To address these important issues, Antonin Scalia, senior Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Bryan A. Garner, author of more than 20 books on legal writing, and Editor-in-Chief of Black's Law Dictionary, have written a massive book, part compendium of canons of interpretation, and part polemic advocating one particular theory of interpretation, which they call "textualism."

Salon.com > Stephen F. Rohde

Scalia’s shameless political agenda