This is like arguing with a rabbit, but try “Daria can drive a Corvette” in an interpretive framework, given that legal language is bound up with such permissive and restrictive constructions.

Now, my impression of Scalia—and it may not be entirely fair—is that the slippery, indeterminate, and inherently ideological nature of language is something that he reallly doesn’t recognize, much less enjoys grappling with.

One could readily extrapolate from his Catholicism, with the concept that it’s up to an ecclesiastical hierarchy to tell the rabble what those laws really mean. His sense of interpretive privilege is ex officio; he considers his ‘approach’ to be valid because he is in a position to make it.

But, yes: his is the kind of approach to eighteenth-century texts that makes literary scholars of that period roll their eyes.

Thanks, Jet, but I’m not interested in borrowing your books as I heard you have a habit of scribbling over all the writing.

This is true to a large extent for every judge in every court in every country. It’s just that this guy is a bit more odious.

Agreed, and thank you.

Here’s where I’m coming from: I spent over ten years in grad school studying linguistic anthropology, and while semiotics/semantics/philosophy of language wasn’t central to my studies, I did enjoy getting my head around various authors grappling with the problem of meaning. Which might explain why I took such umbrage at the suggestion that I see the slipperiness of meaning as something to “cry” about.

Now, my impression of Scalia—and it may not be entirely fair—is that the slippery, indeterminate, and inherently ideological nature of language is something that he reallly doesn’t recognize, much less enjoys grappling with. My understanding of his “textualist” approach is that meaning inheres in language in a transparent, readily accessible, and unproblematic way—a concept of language that linguistic theory from Saussure on has pretty much torn to shreds. But based on Tony’s intellectual style and what we know of his personality (e.g., his penchant for mean-spirited jabs at his fellow jurists in many of his opinions), I would imagine that he would dismiss the whole enterprise as so much pointy-headed academic nonsense, and brush it aside with a hearty “vaffanculo.”

But like I said, my take may not be entirely fair, and there’s much upthread to consider. And I’m not nearly as up on the subject as I was a couple of years ago, so I’m going to defer to Scott Martens on the finer points of linguistic theory and sit back and enjoy the discussion.

“Judges and jerks go well together.” True if (justice) judges and (dull annoying people) jerks go well together? True if (athletic) judges and (weight lifting exercise) jerks go tother? Now that we are starting to get some conditional truths out of the sentence, we can better understand the sentence’s meaning.

i think i understand your “foreigner” example—but it seems to demonstrate that scalia’s idea of textualism merely means “looking the word up in the first dictionary that comes to hand”, which is a bit ordinary given the way he’s being held up

i.e. he says (acc.yr example) the text means what common sense and a recent dictionary say it means—which only isn’t the “living constitution” by virtue of the fact that dictionaries tend to lag a few decades behind actual current usage

Could you cite or give an example of what you mean? The dissenting opinion I cited and the quote I gave from Scalia imply the opposite.

Funny that our only common ground seems to be a shared sense of civil rights and a dislike for Scalia, and yet we can’t be civil to each other even when bashing Scalia. But let us bury the hatchet and be civil and respectful to one another. I’ll go first and you can take a few free shots at me until you get used to the idea.

I don’t think we are using the “truth” in the same sense. When I say true, I mean what would be the conditions of a sentence if it were true. I don’t see how this is different just because the conditions were met in a sentence in a work of fiction.

Scalia is an authoritarian, in politics and in language.

Actually, Jet, the only point I was making was that Scalia’s “textualism” doesn’t even acknowledge that the kinds of semantic issues that are being hashed out in this thread even exist. His view is essentially that words mean what they mean. For someone whose “genius” is consistently accepted as a given across the political spectrum to have such a simplistic and impoverished notion of language and meaning is a continuing source of amazement to me.

I was neither “whining” nor “crying.” But apparently there’s something about me that just gets under your skin, so I can’t say I was surprised that you chose to be such a prick in your “response” to my comment.

The statute excludes only merchandise “of foreign manufacture,” which the majority says might mean “manufactured by a foreigner” rather than “manufactured in a foreign country.” I think not. Words, like syllables, acquire meaning not in isolation but within their context. While looking up the separate word “foreign” in a dictionary might produce the reading the majority suggests, that approach would also interpret the phrase “I have a foreign object in my eye” as referring, perhaps, to something from Italy. The phrase “of foreign manufacture” is a common usage, well understood to mean “manufactured abroad.”

It does appear the ‘original intent’ was to keep “foreigner” created goods out of the US.
IP law predates the Constitution by hundreds of years. Think printing presses and guilds and try Wikipedia.

so the question is: is the law a fiction? (ans = yes obv tho tories will squeak)