[foldr]

I'm not sure the US is currently a particularly great advertisment for its model of constitutional government. In place of acts of Parliament that have a relatively clear interpretation (and that can be undone or modified by elected representatives), there is legislative deadlock and an endless series of judicial séances attempting to determine whether or not Ben Franklin would have supported gay marriage, abortion rights and concealed carry of MANPADS if he'd been born 300 years later.

[graemep]

Do they try to establish intent?

It is very odd that after 200 years of independence they realised that they had failed to realised that the constitution granted a right to have an abortion, and then a few decades later realised that it did not after all.

It feels very much that you have a different arm of the government (the judiciary) making laws in place of the legislature.

Historically it also took a while to get the thirteenth amendment so the constitution was pretty seriously flawed for a very long time.

On the other hand the free speech protections are something I envy.

[philwelch]

> Do they try to establish intent?

No. Originalism is just a form of textualism; it’s based on the “original public meaning” of the law as written. This is a common misunderstanding. The point of originalism is that you can’t interpret a law written in the 18th century as if it was written in the 21st century because language usage changes over time. There’s no good faith reason for it to be the sort of bogeyman it’s become.

[callamdelaney]

Laws are loosely written to effectively apply to anything and are interpreted by the courts. Sentences are subjectively and unevenly applied depending on the 'circumstances' of the offender.

[philwelch]

> Laws are loosely written to effectively apply to anything and are interpreted by the courts.

This is called "English common law" and it is a feature American law shares with many other English-speaking countries.