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Do they try to establish intent?

It is very odd that after 200 years of independence they realised that they had failed to realised that the constitution granted a right to have an abortion, and then a few decades later realised that it did not after all.

It feels very much that you have a different arm of the government (the judiciary) making laws in place of the legislature.

Historically it also took a while to get the thirteenth amendment so the constitution was pretty seriously flawed for a very long time.

On the other hand the free speech protections are something I envy.




> Do they try to establish intent?

No. Originalism is just a form of textualism; it’s based on the “original public meaning” of the law as written. This is a common misunderstanding. The point of originalism is that you can’t interpret a law written in the 18th century as if it was written in the 21st century because language usage changes over time. There’s no good faith reason for it to be the sort of bogeyman it’s become.




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