Strict Sense of The Term
Strict construction requires a judge to apply the text only as it is spoken. Once the court has a clear meaning of the text, no further investigation is required. Judges should avoid drawing inferences from a statute or constitution and focus only on the text itself. Justice Hugo Black argued that the First Amendment's injunction, that Congress shall make no law (against certain civil rights), should be construed strictly: no law, thought Black, admits no exceptions. Ironically, Black's legacy is as a judicial activist. However, "strict construction" is not a synonym for textualism or originalism, and many adherents of the latter two philosophies are thus misidentified as "strict constructionists."
The term is often contrasted with the phrase "judicial activism," used to describe judges who seek to enact legislation through court rulings, although the two terms are not actually opposites.
Read more about this topic: Strict Constructionism
Famous quotes containing the words strict, sense and/or term:
“Yet if strict criticism should till frown on our method, let candor and good humor forgive what is done to the best of our judgment, for the sake of perspicuity in the story and the delight and entertainment of our candid reader.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)