Comment of the Day: : Podcasts I Just Listened to: "Apologies for this being about me instead of the original post...
...but my view on constitutional interpretation is in the process of chancing. For most of my life, I was in favor of a ‘text first!’ method, that to my knowledge was advocated by Hugo Black and just about no one else. I’m coming to the conclusion that the text is just so badly drafted and sketchy that to all intents and purposes the US really has an unwritten constitution. This is just as eccentric as my earlier opinion. But the relevance to Crooked Timber discussions is that both opinions are so far out of the mainstream that I’m neutral in the Supreme Court wars. With that background, one of the few positive developments has been the trend with the Supreme Court, which pre-dates Roberts, on issuing opinions on the narrowest possible grounds. I’m pleasantly surprised the Roberts himself has continued or arguably augmented that. The country is more divided than it's been in fifty years. A big Supreme Court ruling that tries to Fix Things, which has happened at times in the past, would be less than helpful right now.
