02189nam a22003378a 4500 CR9780511761508 UkCbUP 20180107143412.0 m|||||o||d|||||||| cr|||||||||||| 100506s2010||||enk s ||1 0|eng|d 9780511761508 (ebook) 9780521192897 (hardback) 9780521140911 (paperback) UkCbUP UkCbUP rda KF4550 .M33 2010 342.73 22 McDowell, Gary L., author. The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism / [electronic resource] Gary L. McDowell. The Language of Law & the Foundations of American Constitutionalism Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010. 1 online resource (428 pages) : digital, PDF file(s). text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 Oct 2015). For much of its history, the interpretation of the United States Constitution presupposed judges seeking the meaning of the text and the original intentions behind that text, a process that was deemed by Chief Justice John Marshall to be 'the most sacred rule of interpretation'. Since the end of the nineteenth century, a radically new understanding has developed in which the moral intuition of the judges is allowed to supplant the Constitution's original meaning as the foundation of interpretation. The Founders' Constitution of fixed and permanent meaning has been replaced by the idea of a 'living' or evolving constitution. Gary L. McDowell refutes this new understanding, recovering the theoretical grounds of the original Constitution as understood by those who framed and ratified it. It was, he argues, the intention of the Founders that the judiciary must be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution when interpreting it. Constitutional law Print version: 9780521192897 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511761508 Cambridge Books Online 236481 236481