{"id":3279,"date":"2012-12-27T13:13:31","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T20:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2012\/12\/27\/on-the-fixed-meaning-canon\/"},"modified":"2012-12-27T13:13:31","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T20:13:31","slug":"on-the-fixed-meaning-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2012\/12\/on-the-fixed-meaning-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Fixed-Meaning Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;In the English-speaking nations, the earliest statute directed to statutory interpretation made it a punishable offense for counsel to argue anything other than original understanding.\u00a0 Enacted by the Scottish Parliament in <strong>1427<\/strong>, the act was entitled &#8220;That nane interpreit the Kingis statutes wrangeouslie.&#8221;3\u00a0 it read: &#8220;Item, The King of deliverance of councel, the manner of statute forbiddis, that na man interpreit his statutes utherwaies, then the statute beares, and to the intent and effect, that they were maid for, and as the maker of them understoode: and quha so dois the contrarie, shall be punished at the Kingis will.&#8221;4\u00a0 Even with its Law French (&#8220;whosoever speaks the contrary&#8221;), the original meaning of this statute is quite plain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, <em>Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts<\/em>, (2012).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The debate over constitutional originalism or textualism vs. the &#8220;living constitution&#8221; is not new.\u00a0 Nor is it settled, as Obama and his party would have us believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;In the English-speaking nations, the earliest statute directed to statutory interpretation made it a punishable offense for counsel to argue anything other than original understanding.\u00a0 Enacted by the Scottish Parliament in 1427, the act was entitled &#8220;That nane interpreit the Kingis statutes wrangeouslie.&#8221;3\u00a0 it read: &#8220;Item, The King of deliverance of councel, the manner of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,116],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-history","7":"category-judicial-activism","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}