Eric Posner on Libetarians Carrying Around Pocket Constitutions

March 7th, 2014

Eric Posner had this to say about those “libertarians” that carrying around pocket Constitutions.

In our last class, we discussed Jack Balkin’s paper, Why Are Americans Originalist?, which I interpret as a sly debunking exercise. Balkin’s most interesting argument is that the turn to originalism in the 1980s was akin to Martin Luther’s repudiation of the Catholic Church’s monopoly over Biblical interpretation, with the Supreme Court playing the role of the Church. (You might think of the habit among libertarians of carrying around a pocket-sized constitution as the modern version of biblical translation into the common language.)

I hope Will Baude brings a Constitution to the next class. I keep one in each suit. That way I always have on nearby.