Taking Text Too Seriously: Modern Textualism, Original Meaning, and the Case of Amar's Bill of Rights

Abstract

Championed on the Supreme Court by Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas and in academia most prominently by Professor Akhil Amar textualism has emerged within the past twenty years as a leading school of constitutional interpretation. Textualists argue that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with its original public meaning, and in seeking that meaning, they closely parse the Constitution's words and grammar and the placement of clauses in the document. They have assumed that this close parsing recaptures original meaning, but, perhaps because it seems obviously correct, that assumption has neither been defended nor challenged. This Article uses Professor Amar's widely acclaimed masterpiece of the textualist movement, The Bill of Rights, as a case study to test the validity of that assumption.

Women's Civic Inclusion and the Bill of Rights

“…It should be noted that Amar has been criticized for his reading of the Bill of Rights by those who argue against the kind of textual analysis he engages in, which is, according to William Michael Treanor, too rooted in the words of the document itself and insufficiently attentive to the historical context in which the document was produced( Treanor 2007).…”