Practice
An Originalist inquiry into the original meaning of the Constitution is able to cast a much broader net than an inquiry into the original intent.
Originalists of all stripes cite the Federalist Papers. It is fairly tenuous to suggest that this represents a good source for the original intent - after all, Alexander Hamilton, who wrote the majority of those essays, was absent for the greater part of the Philadelphia Convention, and John Jay did not attend it at all. However, James Madison, the principle framer of the Constitution also wrote a substantial amount of the federalist papers. And to suggest Hamilton and Jay's absence from the convention implies their ignorance as to the Constitution's original meaning is demeaning to those two men and inaccurate. The collected anti-Federalist papers, of course, will be no use at all to a person searching for the original intent of the framers. But as evidence of how a reasonable person at the time would have understood the words of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the antifederalist essays are evidence of direct relevance.
Likewise, neither John Adams nor Thomas Jefferson attended the Convention, and thus two of the most prolific writers of the founding era are necessarily excluded (or, at best, abstracted) from an original-intent inquiry. Because they were reasonable contemporaries of the Framers, their writings are informative to discussions of the text's original meaning.
One of the primary virtues of original meaning over original intent is that the original meaning is a fairly discernible thing, while the original intent is nebulous and uncertain. This is well-illustrated by the use of dictionaries. Even out the playing field contemporaneous dictionaries are of dubious value to an original intent inquiry, but of high value to an original meaning inquiry: we can establish what the words the Framers chose meant, but that is not necessarily conclusive as to what they intended to say (consider for example, the law of unintended consequences).
Read more about this topic: Original Meaning
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.... It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)