Court Limits

In June’s Alumni Review, James MacGregor Burns ’39 answers questions about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s impending confirmation hearings. He notes, “There will also be the usual red herring about ‘original intent.’ It is important to remember that the original framers of the Constitution disagreed about the meaning of the Constitution they had just drafted.”

That originalism does not always lead to a simple—or even one—answer on matters of Constitutional interpretation should not lead to the wholesale untethering of the Court from the limits of the Constitution’s language and meaning. Then again, I suppose that, thus unmoored, the Court would be free to arrive at Professor Burns’ desired political ends.

—Russ Day ’91, Washington, D.C.