Lawrence Lessig's recent book, Fidelity and Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2019), restates and expands his important and influential theory of interpretive fidelity as translation. This book review is in three parts. Part One explains why, although Lessig's theory is based on fidelity to original meaning, his originalism is unlike most contemporary versions. Indeed, despite his metaphor of translation, Lessig is not really a textualist at all. Unlike most contemporary originalists, he pays relatively little attention to parsing the words of constitutional text, or to their history. Instead, he is a purposivist and structuralist, who argues that fidelity to purpose and structure in changed contexts may sometimes justify departing from the text or adding things to the text. Part Two examines Lessig’s use of the concept of social meaning to explain and justify many of the Supreme Court’s most famous liberal decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education, the sex equality cases, the reproductive rights cases, and the gay rights cases. Lessig's concept of "social meaning" actually refers to changes in elite consensus among the relatively small groups of elites who form the audience for Supreme Court Justices. Lessig's arguments are an imaginative restatement of the American Legal Process tradition, but using a different vocabulary. In an age of polarized elites like today, however, Lessig's social meaning account threatens to break down, as Lessig himself recognizes. Part Three considers whether a purely internalist theory of constitutional change like Lessig’s is adequate to explain the growth and development of the American Constitution. It argues that Lessig’s account of change relies too much on how the world looks to the Justices, rather than on how the world actually changes; it also relies too much on winner's history. His account could be made stronger by focusing on the role of political parties, social movements, and state-building in constitutional change; and the long-term construction of judicial review by the political branches. The result would no longer be purely internalist. But it might be a more powerful account of the complicated processes of constitutional change.

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翻译宪法

劳伦斯·莱西格 (Lawrence Lessig) 的新书《忠诚与约束：最高法院如何阅读美国宪法》（牛津大学出版社，2019 年）重申并扩展了他作为翻译的重要而有影响力的解释忠诚理论。本书评分为三部分。第一部分解释了为什么尽管莱西格的理论基于对原意的忠实，但他的原意与大多数当代版本不同。事实上，尽管他使用了翻译的比喻，Lessig 根本就不是一个真正的文本主义者。与大多数当代原创主义者不同，他相对较少关注解析宪法文本的文字或它们的历史。相反，他是一个目的主义者和结构主义者，他认为在变化的上下文中忠于目的和结构有时可能会成为背离文本或向文本添加内容的理由。第二部分考察了莱斯格使用社会意义的概念来解释和证明最高法院许多最著名的自由主义判决的正当性，包括布朗诉教育委员会案、性别平等案件、生殖权利案件和同性恋权利案件。莱西格的“社会意义”概念实际上是指构成最高法院大法官听众的相对较小的精英群体之间精英共识的变化。莱西格的论点是对美国法律程序传统的富有想象力的重述，但使用了不同的词汇。然而，在今天这样一个精英两极分化的时代，Lessig 的社会意义解释有可能崩溃，正如 Lessig 自己认识到的那样。第三部分考虑像莱西格这样的纯粹内在主义的宪法变迁理论是否足以解释美国宪法的成长和发展。它认为，Lessig 对变化的描述过多地依赖于世界如何看待大法官，而不是世界实际上如何变化；它也过于依赖获胜者的历史。通过关注政党、社会运动和国家建设在宪法变革中的作用，可以使他的叙述更有力；以及政治部门司法审查的长效建设。结果将不再是纯粹的内在主义。但它可能是对宪法变迁复杂过程的更有力的解释。它认为，Lessig 对变化的描述过多地依赖于世界如何看待大法官，而不是世界实际上如何变化；它也过于依赖获胜者的历史。通过关注政党、社会运动和国家建设在宪法变革中的作用，可以使他的叙述更有力；以及政治部门司法审查的长效建设。结果将不再是纯粹的内在主义。但它可能是对复杂的宪法变迁过程的更有力的解释。它认为，Lessig 对变化的描述过多地依赖于世界如何看待大法官，而不是世界实际上如何变化；它也过于依赖获胜者的历史。通过关注政党、社会运动和国家建设在宪法变革中的作用，可以使他的叙述更有力；以及政治部门司法审查的长效建设。结果将不再是纯粹的内在主义。但它可能是对复杂的宪法变迁过程的更有力的解释。以及政治部门司法审查的长效建设。结果将不再是纯粹的内在主义。但它可能是对复杂的宪法变迁过程的更有力的解释。以及政治部门司法审查的长效建设。结果将不再是纯粹的内在主义。但它可能是对宪法变迁复杂过程的更有力的解释。