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Abstract: Legal scholars have argued that there is nothing that interpretation just is and that even if there were, it would not matter. This Article challenges both claims. Employing the method of conceptual analysis developed by philosophers such as Amie Thomasson and Frank Jackson, the Article argues that to interpret a text just is to form a judgment about the meaning that the author intended to communicate. The Article then explains three reasons why this matters. First, given that judgment is essentially aimed at descriptive accuracy rather than normative desirability, interpretation’s nature as judgment about intended meaning implies that it makes no sense to speak, as many scholars do, of adopting a method of interpretation on normative grounds. Second, interpretation’s nature as judgment about intended meaning supports a version of originalism by showing that rival methods of construing constitutional and statutory meaning do not count as methods of interpretation, casting doubt on their fidelity to the lawmaker’s authority. Third, as applied to the Constitution, this version of originalism is heterodox in several ways. It is an originalism focused on intended meaning, not public meaning or legal meaning. It is an originalism justified by its fidelity to the law, not its ability to promote settlement or judicial restraint. And if recent scholarship on the Bill of Rights is correct, then it is an originalism that in some respects may look more like common-law or moral-reading approaches to constitutional adjudication than conventional originalist approaches.
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