So, to sum up: If, in response to all this, people say, “If everyone had followed your jurisprudential philosophy, we wouldn’t have awesome social outcomes A through Q,” that’s not very persuasive to me, for two reasons: a) You don’t know that. What would our abortion laws be if Roe had never happened, or had been returned to the states? What would we do if we had to, like, get our social movements ratified by more than five people at a time? You don’t know and neither do I. Some movements would still succeed; some wouldn’t; some would succeed more than they have, and/or provoke less backlash. Hard to say.

b) There are some powers you shouldn’t give government even when you think it will use those powers for good in this particular instance–because the powers are open for major abuse in other instances. C-judging, and to a lesser extent B-judging, is that kind of power.

I think a flexible textualism, or judicial humility in the face of statute and legislature, or A-only judging, or whatever you want to call it, is more republican; more democratic; and more coherent than the alternatives. I know that leaves huge swathes of unanswered questions! but if you want your entire legal education from a blog, baby, you’ve got problems I can’t solve…. I only hope this is a useful start to a much, much more full jurisprudential philosophy.