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Mike W's avatar

Well knowing this has been longer then the Great Gatsby does help me feel better about it taking me this long to get through it. I’m excited to still be living in a world where I don’t know anything about the oral arguments and will be hopping over to that tab as soon as I hit ‘POST’ on this comment!

I’m a bit confused by your introduction of “linguistic drift” and how that squares with your very consistent push for originalist/textualist rulings vs the “living constitution” school of thought. How is “linguistic drift” a valid scholarly application to the constitution (“a person” meant <x> at the time and we now all understand it to mean <y>) whereas “living constitutionalism” is a Supreme Court run amuck (“a person” meant <x> at the time but we now also understand that to include <x+y>). I don’t understand the line in the sand you’re drawing between those two applications. Is it just that one is done by the judicial branch and the other is done by legislature/voters? Why would that be a distinction worth making?

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Evan Þ's avatar

Thank you for this astute post! I was previously unsure on the point of whether the President is an "officer of the United States" as the term was used in 1868, but you've convinced me: both by citing the debate in the Reconstruction Congress, and - even more forcefully - pointing out that when a term's technical meaning is unclear then it should be presumed to have been used in its ordinary everyday meaning.

On the one hand, this makes more significant the questions of whether Mr. Trump actually did engage in insurrection. But on the other hand, I'm very glad to no longer be unsure here of such a significant point.

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