Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
9-1997
Publication Information
15 Crisis, no. 8, Sept. 1997 at 54 (book review).
Abstract
A Matter of Interpretation
Antonin Scalia, Princeton University Press, 1997, 159 pages, $20
Antonin Scalia, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, has done more to combat judicial activism than any other living person. Since taking his seat on the High Court in 1986, he has defended and applied a mode of constitutional interpretation - most often called "originalism," sometimes "textualism" - the precise aim of which is to reduce, if not eliminate, judicial lawmaking. Scalia maintains that judges, even Supreme Court Justices, must distinguish what they think law ought to be from what the rule of law in the relevant text actually is. They must faithfully apply the latter.
"It is the text that must be observed," Scalia writes in this important new volume. The book comprises the Tanner lectures he delivered at Princeton, comments by four highly distinguished scholars, and Scalia's response to the commentators. The lectures make up less than half the volume; rather little of them is directly about the matter of constitutional interpretation.
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
Scalia Slugs It Out,
15 Crisis, no. 8, Sept. 1997 at 54 (book review)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1778