Law And Literature: A Relation Reargued

In Law as Literature, Sandford Levinson reports on the differences between a strong textualist and a weak textualist. Essentially, a weak textualist is an objective interpreter that has a goal of finding the meaning in a text. On the other hand, a strong textualist is an interpreter that tries to construct a new meaning from the original text. The idea of weak and strong textualists connects to the notion of the best way to interpret the Constitution; a topic that is explored in Law and Literature: A Relation Reargued. Based on the two different textual interpreters that are described in the article, a weak textualist is the best type of textual interpreter to uphold the values and the intent of the Constitution. When defining the term,
When defining the practice of law, Levinson relies on the beliefs of Langdell, a legal academic, when he states,“For Langedell law was essentially a literary enterprise, a science of extracting meaning from words that would enable one to believe in law as a submission to the commands of authoritative texts(the rule of law) rather than as the creation of willfull interpreters…”(Levinson 374). When Levinson describes law as a science, he supports the goal of a weak textualist, who objectively works to find meaning in a text similarto how scientists follow the scientific process to discover facts. Based on Levinson’s passage about the beliefs of Langdell, people must be weak textualists in order to find meaning in the Constitution and to obey its laws. After all, if the people that are subject to the Constitution are all strong textualists, the Constitution would not succeed in controlling people by granting and limiting power. Moreover, if people are constantly trying to invent new meanings of the Constitution, the Constitution would not be a unified and organized document and would therefore lose its power over