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Thursday, February 09, 2006

The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog: Judicial Activism: Power Without Responsibility? - A Justice Breyer Podcast
When listening to Stephen Breyer's discussion of the merits (and difficulties inherent to) judicial activism and everything that follows, I noticed a remarkable correlation between the topic of study and the philosophical constructs on the proper role of the historian found in NT Wright's New Testament and the People of God. Much of it involves trying to find the proper middle road (Wright calls it critical realism) between naive realism (the distant elaboration of positivism) and subjectivism (which develops with extreme reductionism). The goal -- developing proper interpretations -- is primarily the same in both areas, but I wonder how much light a study of the interpretation of the Bible might shed on the proper methods that should be used when interpreting the Constitution (and subsequent laws).

As a starting point, the idea of using an exploration of the relevant worldviews (one of NT Wright's points) to help guide this study would be a very interesting starting point for legal education indeed. I wonder what it would look like.

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