Talk:Original intent
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Why this article is necessary and important I feel that it is extremely important to differentiate Originalism from Original intent, and that this is best served by the existence of a separate article to address intentionalism. There is an extremely prevalent movement to conflate original intent with originalism, I think because there are many, many valid criticisms of original intent which do not hold true against other originalist theories, but can be made to stick if the two can be conflated (for example, the traditional exhoration that originalism is opposed to Brown v. Board, which is nonsensical: intentionalism might well reject Brown, but virtually all originalists ctegorically reject original intent's premise) This is like arguing that sport is dumb because no grown adult should find gainfull employment hitting balls with bats; it rests on the assumption that "sport" is a synomym for baseball and cricket, and that baseball and cricket constitute not only some sports, not even a majority if sports, but all sport, per se. Likewise, almost no serious originalists are intentionalists, and all of the "high profile" originalists - Scalia, Thomas, Bork, Barnett, Lasch and so on - explicitly reject intentionalism, and have done so for well over two decades. Yet still the false conflation persists, and if Wikipedia is to remain fact-based, it must find ways to break this fiction, IMHO. Simon Dodd 19:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Original intent vs. purposive theory
I have just significantly expanded the purposive theory article, and would like to get some comments on what, if any, differences there are between the two concepts. I think they are somewhat distinct, as purposive theory is related to purpose while an intentionalist theory is related to intent, which can overlap, but not always. Any thoughts? - Jersykoยทtalk 17:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] need support for original intent
It would be great if someone would add in a section on arguments for origional intent in opposed to a living constitution.