Title: Message
Let me take up just one of Bobby Lipkin's questions below -- #4 (although ultimately I think it underlies most of the questions):
 
We ascertain the intent of the framers the same way we ascertain the intent of, say, Justice Blackmun, writing for the majority in Roe v. Wade, or the intent of Artistotle.  We read what they had to say.  We take seriously what they wrote.  And we assess it against the lights of our own reason for consistency with immutable truths (or, as Jefferson would say, self-evident truths).
 
 
John C. Eastman
Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law
Director, The Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Justin Lipkin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 3:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Scalia's Originalism

       As a non-historian and a non-political scientist, let me asks the following questions: (1) Does originalism presuppose the Framers held one determinate view regarding constitutional meaning? Does it permit the Framers' holding several different views? (2) How does one establish such either view? (3) How do historians (and political scientists) deal with the problem of ascertaining "collective intent," a problem that Dworkin and more recently George Fletcher, as well as many others have emphasized? (2) Do those supporting original intent or original understanding appreciate the enormous commitments to differing philosophies of mind involved in either theory?  (4) How do we ascertain the intent---subjective or objective---of a particular Framer? (5) How do we ascertain the public meaning of a critical political or legal term even in contemporary society let alone in the past? and (6) To what are we referring when we make claims that the original intent or understanding of a constitutional provision is X? (7) What evidentiary techniques are required to substantiate such claims? Apologies if some of these questions overlap.

Bobby Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware

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