Larry Alexander, whose views on constitutional theory I admire and respect, has the following comment on my post on semantic originalism:
Re your post today on Leiter, Barnett, et al, you know my views, which I would put as pithily as possible this way:
When I send a letter to my kid at college requesting her to do something, she will interpret it to ascertain what I meant by the symbols I used. That is what my letter meant, as opposed to what someone else’s letter with the same marks might have meant (depending on their context, their native language, whether the marks or the spaces on the page were their symbols for communication, etc.). Originalism–and unlike you, I believe that original intended meaning originalism is all there is, and that original public meaning originalism is either that or is chimerical–simply tells us what the author of a text meant to convey through the text.
The normative question–should, for example, my daughter honor my request once she ascertains what it was–is entirely separate. To see this, note that we can raise interpretive questions about documents that we in no way regard as authoritative. Consider the question of what the Articles of Confederation mean, or the Constitution of the Confederacy. My guess is that even avowed nonoriginalists resort to originalist techniques in answering those questions.
So the questions of what is our (authoritative) constitution and what does it mean are separate and unrelated, except, of course, insofar as a substantively bad meaning would tend to weaken or undermine its authority. But it is crucial not to conflate meaning and authority.
I may have something to say about these issues–but not until Monday at the earliest.