CONTEXTUALISM: Readers have questions about my epic American Constitutional Society panel post! You got questions, I got answers. (Or… I got replies. “Answers,” not so much, this ain’t Ann Landers, bud.)

reader #1 (I will add names if I get permission):

I’m a lawyer, and I saw your comment that you have “found the Sotomayor hearings a farcical exposure of the weaknesses of the ‘originalist’/’just read the text’ position.” I wouldn’t let the ham-handed, grandstanding questioning by the Republican Senators be an indication of the weaknesses of the originalism/textualism position, any more than the equally hapless grandstanding questioning of Justices Roberts and Alito by Democratic Senators should be an indication of the weaknesses of […] other interpretive theories.

Yeah, in fact I basically agree with this. I tried to indicate in the post that I think the progressive/”democratic Constitutionalism” position has weaknesses which largely parallel those of the textualist/”originalist” position, and the latter position has strengths with which the progressives at the ACS are, in my view, productively grappling. (Most prominently, the text guys hammer on our desire not to be ruled by five philosopher-kings or costumed vigilantes; and our belief that words should be basically intelligible to most people. This latter may be naive, but it’s not stupid, and it’s not wrong.) But confirmation hearings, as my father might tell you, are basically the worst window into Constitutional interpretation.

reader #2 aka Willard Moore:

Why do you think it is an advantage to come from an academic and intellectual society, rather than from people with actual experience in practicing law? What do you mean when you say you are out of sympathy with the silent majority?

To the first question, I’m sorry–I hadn’t meant to contrast academia with legal practice. I was intending to contrast academia with political office. The Reagan-era “Constitution in 2000” document came from within a sitting administration; the ACS guys have much more freedom, I think, to distance themselves in intellectually-fruitful ways from the Obama administration.

Second question: Oh you know, this was just my usual anti-bourgeois shtik, and largely not worth the time you spent wondering about it! My sympathies never go to the people who make the world work. I always want to be the monkey-wrencher. I always focus on the things the current culture gets wrong, where we all need a slappin’ from the Church, instead of talking about ways we do things better than other possible civilizations. There are benefits to that approach but there are obvious drawbacks (especially of prideful contempt for one’s fellow Americans), so I try to flag that tendency when I notice it.