"Re: [lbo-talk] Constitutional debate"

[John Mage]

To make amends for my petulant hyperbole in replying to Justin's WWII
post,  I am with him in this debate with my brother. The law (and what
any legal document "means") is a (more or less consistent) social
historical practice, and its results are not deducible from the sciences
of language and/or logic. What the words of the US Constitution or the
Statute of Westminster "mean" in the law is far more likely to be
correctly predicted by a practicisng lawyer (even one without Justin's
massive skills in the sciences of language and logic) than the most
skilled philologist.

john mage