A Matter of Interpretation

The University Center for Human Values Series

by Antonin Scalia, Amy Gutmann (Editor)

We are all familiar with the image of the immensely clever judge who discerns the best rule of common law for the case at hand. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a judge like this can maneuver through earlier cases to achieve the desired aim--"distinguishing one prior case on his left, straight-arming another one on his right, high-stepping away from another precedent about to tackle him from the rear, until (bravo!) he reaches the goal--good law." But is this common-law mindset, which is appropriate in its place, suitable also in statutory and constitutional interpretation? In a witty and trenchant essay, Justice Scalia answers this question with a resounding negative.


In exploring the neglected art of statutory interpretation, Scalia urges that judges resist the temptation to use legislative intention and legislative history. In his view, it is incompatible with democratic government to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by what the judges think the lawgivers meant rather than by what the legislature actually promulgated. Eschewing the judicial lawmaking that is the essence of common law, judges should interpret statutes and regulations by focusing on the text itself. Scalia then extends this principle to constitutional law. He proposes that we abandon the notion of an everchanging Constitution and pay attention to the Constitution's original meaning. Although not subscribing to the "strict constructionism" that would prevent applying the Constitution to modern circumstances, Scalia emphatically rejects the idea that judges can properly "smuggle" in new rights or deny old rights by using the Due Process Clause, for instance. In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals.


This essay is followed by four commentaries by Professors Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin, who engage Justice Scalia's ideas about judicial interpretation from varying standpoints. In the spirit of debate, Justice Scalia responds to these critics.

Genres: Law, Nonfiction, Politics, Legal, Philosophy, History, Government

Hardcover

First published January 6, 1997

About the author

American jurist Antonin Scalia served from 1986 as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of United States.

Antonin Gregory Scalia previously served in the Administrations of Richard Milhous Nixon and Gerald Rudolph Ford, taught law at the universities of Virginia and Chicago, and served on the circuit for District of Columbia. Ronald Wilson Reagan, president, appointed him in 1986. People considered him a core member of the conservative wing; he vigorously advances textualism in statute and originalism in constitutional interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin...

Reviews

[Myles · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The man was so full of shit that if you'd given him an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox."

With a creepily avuncular tone, Scalia advances his originalist agenda without really acknowledging that maybe we're better off not giving the final say on the great legal questions of our time to unelected judges who want us to believe that the framers of the Constitution are on their side of the ideological divide. Instead of the text and manipulative historical readings, which he admits are prone to error, we need to interpret the law to reflect who we are not who certain justices wants us to believe the founding fathers were.

[Richard]

Recommended by Cass Sunstein in Five Books to Change Liberals’ Minds :

Having read these books, you might continue to believe that progressives are more often right than wrong, and that in general, the U.S. would be better off in the hands of Democrats than Republicans. But you’ll have a much better understanding of the counterarguments -- and on an issue or two, and maybe more, you’ll probably end up joining those on what you once saw as “the other side.”

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agree or disagree with him (I often end up on the ladder), the man is a brilliant writer whose lively writing style can make even the most esoteric legal topic perhaps not fun, but at least bearable. That being said, Scalia decries the import of the common-law mindset into the federal court system- especially as it pertains to interpreting statutes and the Constitution. He agrees that Judges in the common law tradition, contrary to once popular opinion, legislate from the bench. To the reader abreast of our American system of governance, one thing should automatically seem problematic about this: this seems to subvert the rule of law since one cannot possibly conform one's behavior to rules that are declared by a judge ex post facto. Moreover, it violates (seemingly) a treasured principle enshrined in our system: the separation of powers. Espousing the oft battle cry of a true formalist, Scalia declares that judges must only do one thing: interpret the law and apply it to the facts. (Ignoring the many cases that, as professor Hart once said, have open texture.)

Scalia, of course, has valid and sound arguments. He is a smart guy after all. What it oft comes down to though is that we have to sacrifice some values for others. In my case, I do not think it is desirable that a country adheres to the rule of law to a perfection. (Indeed, as a descriptive matter, we have never done so.) Additionally, our founders contemplated a workable government of 3 branches that worked together. Our founders knew of the common law and still believed it to be a useful tool. There are many indications that, in regards to constitutional interpretation, our founders expected some provisions of the constitution (esp. the 8th amendment) to be interpreted in light of changing circumstances. (To this point, Dworkin is at his strongest. He points out that its absurd that statesman a part of the enlightenment would have thought that they were writing a document that could not be interpreted in light of changing circumstances.) In any case, putting history aside, I have 2 "beefs" w/ Scalia.

First, take H.L.A. Hart's infamous example of a vehicle. (I'll modify it a bit.) Say that a city bans all vehicles in a park. Okay, clearly it applies to cars- that makes sense. But does it apply to tricycles? How about electric wheelchairs? Scalia would have us say that we ought not to look at the legislative history to find the purpose of why the law was enacted. Why? B/c 1) he says purpose does not exist when you have numerous legislators voting for different reasons. Okay fair enough, but thats not always the case. 2) He says that the rule of law dictates that we as citizens only answer to laws, not legislative history. Few responses: first, legislative history can be quite illuminating. Even the most conservative jurists will use it as a tool. For instance, say in our hypothetical that the town promulgated the rule in response to complaints by the elderly that people were driving their loud and dangerous cars in the park. Is that not illuminating? Why should a court interpret the rule to mean that it bars tricycles! That is absurd and does not help further the legislature's purpose of enacting the law! Of course, Scalia doesn't miss a beat and would argue that we could get to the same result by using statutory cannons. I don't oppose them, my only point is that judges should use all the tools at their disposal to get to what the legislature would have intended. Or perhaps he would have said the legislature should have been more clear and therefore, the court should also apply the law to exclude tricycles! This comes from one point that I found myself having to contend with the most: Scalia believes his approach is more democratic and more deferential to legislatures. I'll get to the deferential point later on, but as to the former point, citizens think in terms of purposes. When they advocate for laws, they have a purpose in mind. Is it not democratic to try to ascertain what the people's representatives would have done with an unthought scenario. Furthermore, Scalia would have us say that a legislature should craft new laws when things are not clear. For that's more democratic. But this is unrealistic. Courts ought to partner with the legislature. In summation, I'm not convinced that Scalia's approach is that conducive to democracy.

Second, Scalia's record on the court buttresses against his colorful rhetoric of deference to the legislature. Want to know who has the highest record of opting to defer the legislature and not strike down laws as unconstitutional? Why that darned living constitutionalist liberal Stephen Breyer! The conservative's rhetoric of "activist judges" (A term Scalia does not use just to be clear) is toxic. Its code for: I don't agree with this decision. I might disagree with Scalia's conservative jurisprudence, but I recognize that every legal question often points in many directions. Indeed, as stated earlier, we must choose which values we think are worth sacrificing. With that mind, I still respect Scalia. He was brilliant and although he was not always consistent with his philosophy of oringialism (read Akil Reed Amar and his eloquent critique of Scalia's Heller decision), I do not doubt that he was genuine. (Moreover, who is always consistent?)

In sum, the book is gold, even for those of us that don't agree with his methodology. Putting aside my numerous disagreements, I can't help but lament one aspect of the book: his constant strawman of "living constitutionalist" judges. (Read the portion of Ronald Dworkin's critique of his philosophy and Dworkin's differentiation b/w semantic intention and expectation intention.)

That being said, Scalia surely changed the terms of the debate. He's encouraged left leaning organizations like the Constitution Accountability Center (a liberal orginalist org.) to enter the debate. Again, the book is gold. After reading this, I encourage readers to grab a copy of Breyer's Active Liberty to get a taste of how Justice Breyer responds to the book.

[Silas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scalia is a very lucid writer and gives clear examples to illustrate his points so the writing itself its was enjoyable to read. However, I found his defense of "textualism" to be weaker than I expected and not very convincing. Parts of it were persuasive, such as his dismissal of Judicial History but his overall thesis was unconvincing. The response essay by Richard Dworkin was brilliant and brought this up from two to three stars. I also found Scalia's response to Dworkin quite lame and evasive, much worse than his original writing.

Original Text: 3/5 Stars
Dworkin Response: 5/5 Stars
Scalia Rebuttal: 1/5 Stars
Overall: 3/5 stars

[April Bowlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

for class flop :/

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer up front: I'm an attorney in the US with a great amount of respect for Scalia's legacy on the court, and I consider myself a full-on textualist with regards to statutory interpretation.

But yeah, five stars from me, easily. Regardless of one's take on the late justice's rulings and the effects of his decisions during his SCOTUS tenure, you'll find practically no one arguing with the statement that Scalia was a clear, effective writer, and that fact shines brilliantly in this short treatise on the logic behind the textualist position. While it probably wouldn't catch much interest from people who aren't interested in this sort of material, I think that's a shame: for all of the vociferous objection and, frankly, misinformation that ran rampant during Scalia's judicial career and now seems more noisy than ever, very few of the most vocal objectors appear to have any experience actually grappling with the perspective espoused by textualism. I'd consider it certainly "conservative," but to write Scalia and Thomas off as merely "right-wingers" is unfair: this is a storied intellectual tradition that is absolutely central to how the most powerful judges in our nation decide, you know, what rights we should probably have, and stuff like that.

The essays in response presented in the second edition are of varying quality. All of them do engage with the text and the general position that it represents, but to mixed results. I don't recall the authors, but in particular the historical essay was, I felt, particularly unpersuasive. But I don't feel worse off for reading them; at a minimum they were informative, and at best they showcased places where Scalia likely left out some crucial detail or failed to drive a point home.

Heartily recommended to anyone with an interest into the Supreme Court, its major decisions in the last 30 years, or anyone just starting out in law school (if it isn't already assigned). Recommended to anybody else in the US to at least flip through with an open mind. And it isn't nearly as difficult or "jargon-y" as you might imagine. Give it a shot. Persuaded or not, it will give you probably the clearest, easiest insight into textualist interpretation - and whether you realize it or not, that single concept of jurisprudence is a very, very important factor in your everyday life in the states.

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's really a collection of essays: A central tract by Scalia, responses by several interesting and learned professors, a useless introduction by another professor, and a rebuttal by Scalia.

While I find Mr. Scalia's rulings often troubling, the theory that he presents here is well-grounded and coherent. It's originalism, or textualism, or strict textualism, or textual interpretation; whatever the name, Scalia believes in a formalistic, reasonable reading of the Constitution that's not informed by what the current reading or current intention (or even current desire) might be. This would seem to be the only way to limit injection of personal, nondemocratic opinion into Supreme Court holdings. It becomes more problematic in and upon application, where some interpretation and historical analysis of understanding must be done by a justice, and it can't uphold certain essential decisions— for example, Scalia would have to vote against Brown.

The responding essays are worthwhile for their sources' varied backgrounds: Wood teaches (or taught— he might have just retired) American history at Brown; Glendon is an expert in comparative politics, particularly modern European law; and Tribe and Dworkin are both focused on Con. law. As seems to be the case with most Supreme Court rulings too, all sides have read and responded to each others' essays prior to publication, which does make the construction of the book slightly odd. Still, the writing is for the most part very clear, and (at least when paired with well-conducted seminar discussions) the topic and the ensuing debate is fascinating.

It's too bad, though, that Scalia actually gets to implement any of these theories. It just makes everything way too f———ing real. Can't we exist happily (naïvely, maybe) in the realm of pure theory?

[Vincent Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction into the now nearly dominant legal philosophy of textualism and originalism. Scalia's article reads like a manifesto that pithily summarizes the opening volley of a frontal assault on the then existing interpretive schemas. Even if one does not agree with Scalia, (for example, I am not totally sold on many of his ideas), it is worth reading because of the influence of his ideas (for people who despite him, know thy enemy). The main article basically summarizes the main tenets of textualism that I learned in my first year course "legislation and regulation" (in fact, even the three semantic canon examples Scalia uses are the ones I learned in the course along with a sustained critique of the famous Dueling Canons article). The article lays out the theoretical and practical issues with trying to read legislative intent (the words enacted, not unexpressed intention are the law and the "legislature's intent" seem often to match the policy preferences of the judge respectively). Scalia also discusses the illegitimacy of legislative history as manipulatable by lobbyists, unhelpful or illegally creating lawmakers. Scalia discusses how textualism is not the same as strict constructionism and uses famous US v. Smith case (whether someone trading a gun for drugs is "using" a gun in meaning of a criminal statute) as an example that distinguishes the two (between reasonable construction and literal reading). Scalia also takes the time to mourn the common law practices that he sees as imported to constitutional interpretation (most famously the living constitution concept) that makes the constitution overly pliable to the machinations of clever judges. Scalia argues that this is fundamentally undemocratic, and a subversion of the purpose of the constitution as protecting rights from the flows and ebs of unsustained popular opinion. To curtail this, Scalia suggests originalism, and looking at the publically understood meaning of the constitution at the time of adoption, any other interpretive method is dismissed as giving judges undue power.

Scalia's article itself is worth the price of admission, but the book contains comments by several renowned scholars (for the first time I recognize every name in a collection of essays, including the name of my property professor). The first comment is by Gordon Wood (my favorite historian), who expands a minor theme in radicalism of the american revolution, by tracing the history of judges in early american history. Wood claims that judges (even justices) were seen as political figures who saw nothing wrong with taking political sides and frequently co-served in political positions such as the cabinet. It was only later that the judiciary transformed into an independant and technical (legalistic) profession. Wood argues that while many lament the power of judges to set aside statutes in favor of the common law, this was a design and not a defect. Wood traces the history of how minor magisterial judges which were seen as extensions of the crown transformed into a coordinate branch of the legislature (which frequently acted like a court before). Wood also discusses the transformation of the constitution as a political document to be interpreted by all political branches into a legalistic document that gave the courts a monopoly over interpretation. At the very least Wood challenges many of the traditions that Scalia claims to be returning to.

Tribe's article discusses a theme he later develops in the Invisible Constitution, that of a lack of meta-rule for interpretation in the constitution (which itself would require a meta-rule ad infinitum, a variation of a Godel's incompleteness theorem) which requires looking beyond the four corners of the text to interpret the document. In fact, Tribe argues that the only amendment that guides interpretation is the ninth amendment discussing unenumerated rights. Tribe argues that Scalia's portrayal of the living constitution is a strawman and argues that the line that Dworkin and Scalia drew between general principle and specific rules is hard to pin down the certainty.

Professor Glendon's article looks at the issue through comparative law lenses. She notes the progress of civil law jurisdictions in adopting common law tools and the lack of comparable progress in the common law world to develop traditions of statutory interpretation (both Scalia and Glendon discuss how law school education tends to focus on reading appellate cases rather than any training in statutory interpretation, luckily this situation has been rectified since the time this book was written, at least at Harvard, Legislation and Regulation is a required first year class).

Finally, Dworkin discusses (seemingly preempting Balkin's thesis in Living Originalism) how certain general principles are understood even at the time of the founding to be abstract principles. Dworkin argues that Scalia's originalism seems to be based on the expected applications of these principles by those who wrote them, rather than the meaning the enactors intended.

Scalia responds to each comment in turn, (suffice to say that lawyers are good at arguing), and I'm not doing justice to the nuances and counterarguments that each author brings to the table. A highly recommended collection.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly want to get onboard with Justice Scalia’s brand of interpreting common law, statute, and the Constitution. It is attractive because it is true to our contemporary understanding of the democratic structure and processes of our country: legislatures create laws, the executive branch executes those laws, and, when disputes arise, judges apply the laws to the facts and thus reaffirm the law while deciding the dispute. It is also attractive because of its consistency: a judge, Scalia maintains, deciphers the meaning of the text of the law according to the judge’s determination of what the text’s drafters meant to codify through the text. This is relatively neat and tidy; though this interpretive model cannot entirely block the willful judge from wielding her personal views and biases, it at least limits the space in which she can do it.

Sadly, however, I am not entirely convinced that Scalia’s methodology is correct, or even that his conception of the judicial role is entirely correct. First, I will evaluate Justice Scalia’s views on statutory interpretation, which is arguably the most important role that modern judges play given the volume of regulation they are called upon to interpret. I think I appropriately represent Scalia’s view when I say that his brand of textualism necessarily permits some flexibility to the manner in which the judge attributes meaning to the text. There is, nevertheless, a limit to that flexibility; beyond a point, text cannot bear semantic parsing because the meaning attributed to the text no longer passes the laugh test. Smith v. United States is such an example, and I believe I agree with Scalia’s incredulity at the meaning the case’s majority attached to the phrase “use a firearm.” Scalia believes that judges should pronounce upon the text the meaning it most realistically bears and, if that is contrary to the will of the legislature, leave it to the legislature to adjust the text.

However, this assumes that the Founders consciously created a system propounding neat lines between the roles of the legislature and the judiciary. Legislatures make laws and judges apply laws to concrete disputes. Professor Wood, however, convincingly speculates that the Founders’ understanding of the roles of legislatures and judges was not nearly so clear or so harmonious with our contemporary conceptions. Drafting clear, directive codes was more challenging, and legislatures less guided by republican ideals than the colonists anticipated. In this historical context, could the Founders have accepted that the judiciary, far from representing a sycophantic arm of the hated crown, could be a buffer between the people and the majoritarian legislatures? At least some evidence seems to suggest they did. The Founders embedded a judiciary in the Constitution despite the view in the preceding decades that judges merely constituted an element of the executive branch. Congress received power to establish lower courts, which it did. And, although some certainly scowled at Chief Justice Marshall’s jurisprudential jujitsu in Marbury v. Madison that secured for the judiciary the power to review acts of the legislature, the concept stuck less than 15 years after the birth of the Constitution.

I wonder, then, if Justice Scalia’s insistence that judges kowtow to Congress’s oh-so-carefully chosen statutory language is as historically necessary as he contends that it is. Although some statutes—typically those that make legal news—are ambiguous, most are not. Perhaps it is therefore somewhat inaccurate to intimate that judges in every jurisdiction are chomping at the bit to create law in spite of statutory language that, if read by its plain meaning, would not permit any result but one. I suspect that most cases of statutory interpretation present at least largely unambiguous text and that judges charged with interpreting it do so fairly faithfully to that text. I also suspect that, where statutory text is vague few judges flagrantly flout all the text’s reasonable textual interpretations to arrive at a completely implausible but personally pleasing outcome, or ignore the text’s statutory context to arrive at a similar result. Rather, I think most judges employ statutory interpretation tools similar to those Justice Scalia wields when confronted with an imprecisely worded statute. They try where possible to construct a reasonable interpretation based on the text. They attempt to reconcile the text’s meaning with the overall structure and content of the statute. They employ other canons of construction. Reasonable minds may and do differ on the meaning of text even after these methods have been applied. I do not think this is divergence of reasonable minds is occasion to castigate judges that look for textual meaning outside the original understanding of the text’s drafters; divining that original understanding seems to me a comparably imprecise exercise to many, but not all, others. Perhaps I am naïve and flat out wrong; if so I will sheepishly stand corrected.

I turn very briefly to Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States to make a final point in conclusion. Like Justice Scalia, I cannot help but find the Court’s outcome troubling at best and, at worst, ridiculous. Where judges willfully and admittedly step outside the clear boundary of reasonableness permitted by the text, it is cause for alarm. It alarms me just as it alarms Justice Scalia. My question, however, is whether that alarm is conditioned by a slightly skewed understanding of the role the Founders intended the judiciary to play. If Scalia and conservatives more generally are correct and judges making law is absolutely inconsistent with the system the Founders intended, then Holy Trinity is wrong. If, however, Professor Wood’s thinking is correct and the Founders conceived of the judiciary as a backstop to protect justice from legislative gaffes, I am not so sure Holy Trinity represents the wrong result or judicial process.

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was in the 3.5 to 4 star range. I was hoping for more insight into how the Supreme Court operates, but did not find that. Judge Scalia explained his way interpreting the constitution as "textualism", with some arguments to support his philosophy. There were then a series of more or less relevant rebuttals and criticism of his philosophy, one of which was so off-base, I was surprised it was included in the book. Honestly, how the German supreme court operates in relation to its relatively recent (post WWII constitution) is actually irrelevant to the US Supreme Court and our constitution. Some of the commentaries on Judge Scalia's essay were quite tedious. Scalia's rebuttal of the commentaries seemed to degenerate into a "I didn't say this, I said that" type argument. Frankly, reminded me how much lawyers like to spar with each other, and trump each other with their "superior" arguments. In summary, reading this book depends on how much you already know or have come across with our legal system. I don't think I came across much new material after the first essay.

[Daniel Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scalia calls us to be textualists and originalists. Several people respond.

Scalia is a very entertaining writer, but a bit too cute. He’s good at motivating naive textualism and naive originalism, but for someone like me who finds the naive versions plausible yet still feels the need to a deeper and more complete picture, this ain’t it. The responses by Tribe and Glendon were unreadable, I thought, but wood and dworkin put some precise pressure on, and Scalia didn’t have a lot to say back. The question of what exactly is codified in a law for a textualist, is actually hard in a lot of cases, especially cases of fairly open moral standards. When the going gets tough like this you wish you had someone trained more in analytic philosophy to make things a bit more precise. Dworkin brought that a bit here, but even he got carried away with himself.

At the very least it left me excited to get into some debates about positivism, formalism, and originalism!

[June · Rating 2 out of 5]

As with all textualist/originalist work, I find the motivations extremely compelling but the theory falls flat. Constraining judicial interpretation is a laudable goal, but Scalia doesn't do a great job constraining himself in this book, nor do I think his theory is very effective at it. Also, unrelated to the main point of the talk, but it really feels like Scalia either doesn't understand or is willfully ignoring the fact that almost all rights are reciprocal and involve something imposed on others. There is a lot of talk about losing of various "unpopular" rights, but no examination as to why this may be the case and any corresponding rights or freedoms gained as a result. Dworkin's response was a banger as usual.

[Alan Johnson]

This is the 2018 new edition of the original 1997 edition. The new edition contains a new introduction by Akhil Reed Amar and a new afterword by Steven G. Calabresi.

I partially read the first edition in 2005. I am reading this edition in its entirety as part of my current project to examine all sides of the debate over constitutional and statutory interpretation. I don't agree with Scalia on many issues, but he is obviously a "must-read" author on this longstanding controversy.

This book also contains commentaries by Amy Gutmann, Gordon S. Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin.

[Zuzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essay itself reads quite well, Scalia certainly knows how to write a good piece of text. The four comments differ in quality, but they offer some really good and thought-provoking arguments. Scalia's response, however, is quite disappointing: he does not play fair and he does not offer a solid response to his critics. I truly want to read more about textualism and originalism and I am ready to do so with an open mind, but this book did not give me enough arguments to understand those who oppose "a living Constitution", I will most probably continue with some Akhil Amar :)

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scalia argues for textual interpretation; laws are what their words mean. his argument implies that doing so assures a a more objective interpretation. Unfortunately “original meaning of the text” offered him latitude to determine those meanings render from his analysis that amounts to, “what it means to me.”

Scalia was slippery and because of that, he will not how down in the books as a John Marshall. He was a loyal henchman for his political party as he meted out judgements aligned with agendas bent on maintaining the status quo of those who seek to prevent social change.

[Leanna Solomin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly, I’d like to say that the collection of essays was very interesting to read. However, it was rather overwhelming to read and hard to keep track of the many points being made. I understand why it was organized that way, but unless you understood all the terms and points the authors were discussing, you could get lost very easily. Overall, very interesting to read because Justice Scalia isn’t with us any longer to explain himself what he wanted his opinions and dissents to say. Would recommend with a caution that you might have to reread portions of it.

[Tyler S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for anyone interested in U.S. federal courts and the law. In this brief book, Justice Antonin Scalia summarizes key aspects of his core judicial philosophy, such as textualism and originalism. Scalia persuasively argues for a constrained and limited judicial power, where judges are bound by the text of the law and not other extraneous materials. The book features several responses to Scalia's argument from prominent legal figures, as well as Scalia's response.

[Charlotte Lepic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, no matter what you think of him and his worldview, I really do think this is a must read, especially for would-be law students or those in law school. It’s just an incredibly thoughtful explanation of why he judged the way he did. There is much to criticise about him, but this essay should trigger thought and questioning in all. Bonus points for being short and really extremely well written, far from boring unlike many such writings.

[David McGrogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to imagine this kind of book coming about nowadays, because genuine debate has become so unfashionable; for that reason alone, it is a refreshing read. It is a shame that the responses to Scalia included are of such variable quality, and the introductory and concluding chapters so weak. It is only really in the discussion with Dworkin that we feel as though we're getting somewhere, but by then the book is almost over.

[Melvin Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't always agree with the late Justice Scalia, but we agree more often than not. This book offers a pretty good insight into his thinking and analysis process. There are critiques and criticisms by constitutional scholars and a sort of back and forth on issues of principles of constitutional interpretation that make for fascinating reading if you're interested in how he reached the conclusions that he did. I definitely think this is worth the time to read.

[Manny Dominguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

My professor always suggested to me to read the other side of political spectrum. It was a good read and made me think about how to counter argue some of the more refined and well thought out arguments from people of opposite side of political spectrum. While i did think some of his lacked in certain areas he also had really great arguments for others areas. It did implore me to start thinking more critically. Fine tune my thoughts and arguments.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not just an essay by Justice Scalia, but a series of responses by other noted constitutional and Supreme Court scholars. The format means that there is less coherence than I would have liked, and the writing always has the smack of legalese. I can't point to specific passages; it's just a general sense.

[Dio Mavroyannis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to imagine how much is packed into this little and very accessible book. I don't know if this is the right edition but followed by Scalia's essay is Dworkin and some other scholars commenting. This makes the book feel very complete, where the different philosophies are defended by their most potent adherents. You get a HARD punch of jurisprudence philosophy all in less than 200 pages.

[Jack Chambers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scalias essay is very readable and is very clear with his points. The critiques and Scalias responses are also very enjoyable. This is a great mental exercise of statutory interpretation for conservative and liberal jurists alike.

[Jason Perlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

To clarify -- the four stars are not an endorsement of originalism! Most of this book is actually made up of responses and critiques by other scholars, which is an unusual and quite enlightening format.

[Zbyszek Kiedacz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ciekawa dyskusja o tekstualizmie. Ciekawa forma (główny esej - kontreseje - odpowiedź na kontreseje), obniżająca jednak poziom dyskusji i pozostawia niedosyt. Na koniec zostaje się z niezaadresowanymi wypowiedziami jednej ze stron i poczuciem niedosytu.

[Sean Jamison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scalia gives a good breakdown and defense of his interpretive philosophy - textualism. I thought it was admirable that counter arguments were in the book - and I agree with the counter arguments. The constitution is a set of PRINCIPLES meant to govern through time not a static document meant to be interpreted as originally written. But that’s IMO - 6/9ths of the SC doesn’t agree with me.

[Dana Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed Justice Scalia's writing. He raises important points about the rule of law and the role of the judicial system in a democracy.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting. There are several commentaries on Scalia’s essay, and his responses, included.

[Holly]

Read for my con law class--wow, lots to think about now...