Oh so very true, P-Marlowe!
Yes, a citation please Bruce Campbells Chin re: Scalia's "idiotic remark."
[Somehow this doesn't sound like Justice Scalia at all. So — where's your "proof?"]
“Yes, a citation please Bruce Campbells Chin re: Scalia’s “idiotic remark.” “
The remark would not be idiotic. The drafters of an amendment have no authority over the meaning because they have no power to adopt the amendment.
That power rests in the states. If the states that vote for an amendment had a different understanding of a term than what the drafters did, then it would be the intent of the states that matters.
In most cases, there should be no conflict. But, for example, suppose the Founders had sat around a table (there were only 5 involved) and decided that NBC meant what Vattel wrote. However, the new states were using NBC as interchangeable with the previous natural born subject, so unless someone TOLD them otherwise, their intent in voting for it would be what they understood. Secret handshakes would not count.
However, it is also true that the courts look at the actual words passed and approved. For example, if the ‘intent’ was to make ex-slaves citizens, but the words say “everyone”, then the courts must use “everyone”, and not try to read into the text something that isn’t there.
It is up to the drafters and the voters to make sure the words say what they mean.
Here in Arizona, a case has come up over the words in a referendum passed in 2000. The words specify that “available funding” will be spent, but the drafters now claim they meant ‘funding will be made available’.
The courts, so far, have ruled that available funding means funding that is made available, not that funding MUST be provided. BTW - the actual phrase was found in a page of small text. The ballot wording showed no state funding would be used...so there was deception, IMHO, when the ballot passed. But the courts use the text of the law, not the one sentence version provided on the actual ballot.