Contrary to what the late Justice Antonin Scalia allegedly said about law’s intention, Thomas Jefferson had put it this way.
"The true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1808.
And all due respect to the family, friends and supporters of Justice Scalia, imo his alleged statement about textualism doesn’t compliment the legal principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
In fact, most people evidently don’t read laws for themselves, instead relying on word of mouth to learn about a law.
But consider that a MAJOR problem with learning a law by word of mouth is that the law gets distorted by rumor, hearsay and gossip.
Corrections, insights welcome.
“In fact, most people evidently don’t read laws for themselves, instead relying on word of mouth to learn about a law.”
If the government wanted people to read the laws for themselves, they would set a reasonable maximum number of laws, and make a rule that all the laws had to be at most a few sentences long, written in plain language that someone without a college degree could understand.
For an example of a system of laws designed for everyone to be able to read and understand, see the 10 Commandments. For an example of laws that are designed to be byzantine and inscrutable, see the US Code.
I winced a bit at the same portion of the Scalia quote that you highlighted.
It seems that this would indicate that there is some kind of divergence between “textualism” and “original intent”, but I don’t think that the difference is really all that stark.
The law should be read as the text was both written AND intended at the time it was written. The two go hand in hand.