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What Supreme Court Justices have to teach us about the art of interpreting literature
The Supreme Court may be the most important group of interpreters in the United States. Every year, the court reviews thousands of appeals and determines several hundred cases.
The court’s decisions can shape American life for many years or even decades. But what is the process by which justices make such momentous decisions?
But like… I’m just writing an essay on what T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land means, you say. Are you about to bore me with politics and legal debates?
No, I’m about to regale you with a world of thought that can be applied to how we should think about the idea of “interpretation.”
I’m gonna… do that with… with politics and legal debates.
But come on, man. It’ll be fun.
There are a few different schools of interpretation when it comes to addressing the constitution and separate laws:
Originalism: This is the belief that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original understanding of the Founding Fathers.
Intentionalism: This is the interpretation of a law based on the intention of the lawmakers who passed the law.
