Linguistics

2
Essay
84.1
Originalist Methodology
Lawrence B. Solum
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

I owe thanks to the participants in The University of Chicago Law Review Symposium on “Developing Best Practices for Legal Analysis,” which led to the Symposium Issue in which this Essay appears, and to participants at a faculty workshop at Georgetown University Law Center. I owe special thanks to Gregory Klass and Louis Michael Seidman for the their very helpful suggestions and criticisms. My thanks as well to Johanna Schmidt for valuable research assistance. © 2017 by Lawrence B. Solum.

I.  The Theoretical Framework

The development of an originalist methodology requires a theoretical framework, the elaboration of which can begin with the idea of meaning itself.

A.    The Meaning of “Meaning”