22 February 2004

So Much For The Widening Gyre...


      Scientists, apparently, are now monitoring Justice Scalia to see if the phenomenon recurs.

      On a more serious note, this article from The Globe and Mail poses an important question, and this blog's answer should be clear. I'm reminded of the Frostian instruction on interpretation, that a poem is entitled to any reading that the poem will hold. Maybe we need a new hermenteutical principle: the authors may be dead, while the texts are neither alive nor dead, but undead. Yes, the Vampirical Constitution, moving in the night, adapting to the times, suriviving among us. With fangs. (This blog wonders what Justice McLachlan would say to that.) Less cynically, the more we treat the constitution as a dead document, the more we commit ourselves to archaism, and commit ourselves to rigidity and eventual stagnation. One brief point to add to this: if we subscribe to the idea of Original Intent, do we have to call Jean Chretien, key composer of the repriated constitution, every time we have a judicial question? No, I didn't think so....

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