Source: https://doubleaspect.blog/tag/interpretation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 21:05:46+00:00

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Justice Scalia is often snarky. But he gets as good as he gives. Both tendencies were recently on display, after Justice Scalia apparently asserted that judges interpreting law in accordance with the “spirit of the age” were among the causes of Nazi barbarities, including the Holocaust ― a none too subtle dig at “living constitutionalism” and, perhaps, “judicial activism” of all sorts (whatever judicial activism is). The first reaction of some (myself included) was to think of Goodwin’s law. Others wax sarcastic about “peak Scalia.” Both snark and counter-snark are unjustified.
Start with the snark. Of course, when the spirit of the age is rotten, interpreting law in accordance with it will give foul results. But what about Justice Scalia preferred originalist approach? It will give better results if the law one interprets was written in a more enlightened age than the interpreter’s own; but if a law reflects the prejudice and ignorance of times past, then it is interpreting it in accordance with the spirit of those times that will give us bigoted jurisprudence. If one believes, with Martin Luther King, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, then originalism is, on balance, an unattractive interpretive approach, although this does not exclude the possibility that it will sometimes yield just results, perhaps even more just results than the alternatives.
Closer to home, Justice Lamer, as he then was, observed in R. v. Collins,  1 S.C.R. 265, that “[t]he reasonable person is usually the average person in the community, but only when that community’s current mood is reasonable” (emphasis mine). The point Justice Scalia was, I think, trying to make ― in however exaggerated a fashion ― is the same as that at which Justice Lamer was getting in this passage: the “spirit of the age,” the Zeitgeist, can be foul, and when it is, it is the judiciary’s duty to resist it as best it can, to prevent it from contaminating the law.
We can, of course, debate whether originalism is the best, or even an adequate way of doing so. We can say that perpetuating the iniquities of the past is no solution to the injustices of the present. But the idea is not absurd. It deserves discussion, not derision. It’s a shame that the spirit of the age, what with its addiction to soundbites and gotcha lines, appreciates the latter more than the former.
The idea that interpretation in law is similar to interpretation in music is not exactly new. For example Joseph Raz, in “Authority, Law, and Morality,” first published in 1985, wrote that “Judicial interpretation can be as creative as a Glenn Gould interpretation of a Beethoven piano sonata.” But Jack Balkin, in a wonderful paper, “Verdi’s High C,” develops it much further than a throwaway analogy. The paper is relatively short and well worth reading, but here’s a summary, followed by some comments.
[l]aw, like music and drama, involves more than a reader and a text. It involves a complex of reciprocal influences between the creators of texts, the performers of texts, and the audiences affected by those performances.
Prof. Balkin also points out, however, that there are differences between interpretation in law and in music. For one thing, a judge is required to interpret a law if it is relevant to a case before him, whereas no artist has to interpret a particular piece of music. A further difference is that in law, the interpretations of some interpreters (for example those of a Supreme Court) are binding on other interpreters. There is no such hierarchy of authority in art. Finally, in law, we expect that, at least over time, controversies over the interpretation of particular texts will be settled. There is no such expectation in music, and indeed it would be boring if all the performers played a given piece in the same way.
Again, I find this very interesting and largely convincing. Here are some mildly dissonant notes though.
Speaking of Glenn Gould, he is the greatest reminder there ever was that some performers don’t care much for the audience. Gould hated the interactive nature of performing before an audience, which prof. Balkin implies is a necessary component of authentic performance―the applause, which he wanted to “ban,” the performers’ tendency to play to the crowd. Eventually, he retired from concerts at the height of his career―choosing only to make records which he felt allowed for more genuine and better interpretation. I’m not sure if there is a judicial equivalent to this. Judging, and particularly appellate judging, forces the interpreter to think of at least some audiences―the parties and one’s colleagues on an appellate panel―in ways that make a Gouldian escape to the recording studio impossible. Or does it?
The last, and probably most important point I want to make concerns the relationships between authorship and interpretation in law, music, and literature. Prof. Balkin’s paper implies that these are distinct roles. But that isn’t exactly so.
Take literature first. In the beginning, literature was all about interpretation. There were no fixed texts, and no recognized authors. But there were stories, traditional stories, which had to be retold, and thus interpreted. That has changed of course, so much that we have forgotten that in literature, interpretation pre-dated authorship. Homer didn’t make up his stories, but his interpretation of someone else’s stories is remembered while any other versions have been forgotten, and we regard him as the author. In reality though, the distinction between authorship and interpretation has endured. Shakespeare, for the most part, did not make up his stories either―he worked on the basis of other plays, or histories―his plays are interpretations, though of course they are very much his work and not that of his predecessors. I could go on for a very long time, but the point is simple―there is hardly such a thing a pure authorship ― yet, at the same time, the interpreter is an author too, and can make the interpreted text his own creation. I think the same is true, to an extent at least, of music. Really distinctive interpreters, such as Glenn Gould, are creators in their own right (for better or worse―it is not a sign of approval to say that Gould’s Mozart is not really Mozart at all), while composers engage in a great deal of interpretation, whether of specific melodies that they use in their work or of musical forms (Chopin’s waltzes, say, are interpretations of the generic waltz form).
What about law? Here I think it is, in some ways, quite similar to literature. For a long time, there were no, or at least few, legal texts. Like traditional stories which existed without a canonical form and a known author, common law rules were long believed to exist without a “form of words,” and without being regarded as creations of individual judges in particular cases. Lord Mansfield famously wrote that “[t]he law does not consist of particular cases but of general principles, which are illustrated and explained by these cases.” (R. v. Bembridge, (1783) 3 Doug. 327 at 332, 99 E.R. 679 (K.B.)). It is now much more common to regard particular judges in particular judges as authors of legal rules―say, Lord Atkin as the author of the neighbour principle in Donoghue v. Stevenson). But many people, perhaps most famously Ronald Dworkin, still see at least some truth in the older conception, according to which judges are to some considerable extent retelling, rather than inventing, stories. (This makes me think that Hercules was an inapt name for Dworkin’s model judge. He should have been named Homer.) Conversely, as Thomas Hobbes already observed, in their capacity as interpreters of legislation (and now constitutions), judges are always in danger of becoming authors. Debates about judicial activism are, arguably, debates about what it means to be an interpreter or an author. The persistence of these debates shows that there is no clear distinction between these roles.
Apologies for the length! My fascination with the topic got the better of me.
Any constitution, at least I suppose any constitution that has existed for a while, is surrounded by myths―stories that we tell ourselves to explain why things are as they are and, often, to reassure ourselves that they are as they ought to be. Among the myths surrounding the Canadian constitution, one of the most popular ones is that according to which originalism has no place in Canadian constitutional interpretation. Justice Binnie, for example, retold this myth in a debate with justice Scalia on “judging in a democracy” at a conference dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As many if not all myths, this one is rooted in fact, namely in the famous rejection of originalism by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the “Persons Case”―Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General),  A.C. 124. The Privy council compared the constitution to a “living tree” and held that it interpretation should make room for its “growth and expansion within its natural limits.” But as with other myths, our anti-originalist myth makes claims much broader than what its historical foundation can support. Contrary to popular belief, originalism is not altogether absent from Canadian constitutional law, though areas in which it lives on are admittedly narrow enough.
One application of originalism in Canadian constitutional law can be found in a Privy Council decision rendered only a few years after the Persons Case, A.-G. Canada v A.-G. Ontario,  A.C. 326, better known as the Labour Conventions Reference. As I wrote here, Lord Atkin rejected the federal government’s argument that a constitutional provision allowing Parliament to enact legislation implementing imperial treaties also allowed it to implement treaties entered into by Canada itself, holding that “it is impossible to strain the section so as to cover the uncontemplated event” (Canadian independence, that is, uncontemplated at the time of confederation in 1867). As I said in the post linked to, Lord Atkin’s reasoning is not only originalist, but it is that, too. And however much that decision has been criticized, including by those who, like F.R. Scott, thought that it contributed to the Privy Council’s distortion of the constitution’s original meaning, it is an essential part of the fabric of our constitutional law.
Another application of originalism in Canadian law is in the interpretation of the terms “the Constitution of Canada” and “the constitution of the province” in ss. 91(1) and 92(1) of the Constitution Act, 1867 (now ss. 44 and 45 of the Constitution Act, 1982) does not include what Justice Beetz described, in Ontario (Attorney General) v. OPSEU,  2 S.C.R. 2, at 40, as “fundamental term[s] or condition[s] of the union formed in 1867.” In OPSEU, Justice Beetz cited Att. Gen. of Québec v. Blaikie,  2 S.C.R. 1016, which held that legislative bilingualism of the federal Parliament and Québec’s legislature was “part of the Constitution of Canada and of Quebec in an indivisible sense” (OPSEU, p. 40) and thus outside the scope of s. 92(1), as an example of the application of that rule. The rule was also applied in Re: Authority of Parliament in Relation to the Upper House,  1 S.C.R. 54, to support the conclusion that some hypothetical constitutional amendments regarding the Senate would be outside the scope of Parliament’s power under s. 91(1). It will also be applied, though we do not yet know to what effect, in the Supreme Courts future decision on the constitutionality of the federal government’s proposed Senate reform.
Finally, something like originalism is also used to define the “core jurisdiction” of provincial superior (“s. 96”) courts that cannot be removed from them, whether in favour of the Federal court or of (purely) provincial courts. Although Parliament and provincial legislatures respectively can confer on these courts jurisdiction that was exercised by superior courts at Confederation (in 1867), they cannot, pursuant to MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. v. Simpson,  4 S.C.R. 725, make these grants of jurisdiction exclusive.
Originalism seldom, if ever, appears unalloyed in Canadian constitutional law. Thus, as I wrote in the post on the Labour Conventions Reference linked to above, Lord Atkin’s reasons not only rely on the original meaning of the provision at issue, but are also “mindful of principle and of practical concerns.” Blaikie, for its part, uses an originalist approach to interpretation of the term “constitution of the province,” but then switches to living constitutionalism in order to answer “the question whether ‘regulations’ issued under the authority of acts of the Legislature of Quebec are “Acts” within the purview of s. 133,” holding that “it would truncate the requirement of s. 133 if account were not taken of the growth of delegated legislation” since 1867. Still, a fair reading of these decisions must acknowledge how important originalist reasoning is to them.
Very tentatively, I am inclined to think that this is unavoidable. We wouldn’t have an entrenched constitutional text that prevails over ordinary legislation unless we thought that the moment of its enactment had some special importance―otherwise it is not clear why decisions taken then must carry greater weight than those reached more recently. And if that moment had and still has some sort of special importance, then so, plausibly, have the ideas or practices that prevailed then. The temptation to refer to them might be too strong to avoid. This is very sketchy, I know, but, I hope, enough for now.
UPDATE: In the interest of shameless self-promotion, I mention that I took on another myth of the Canadian constitution, the one contrasting our “peace, order, and government” with the Americans’ “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” here.
Author Leonid SirotaPosted on August 3, 2012 April 7, 2013 Categories Constitutional law, Law of Democracy, New TechnologiesTags election law, elections, internet, interpretation, politics, politique, Québec3 Comments on Oui… Non… Peut-Être?

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