Laws should always be viewed in the light of legislative intent, *IF* that is discernible from the available records.
A new law states it is legal to drive 85 mph on a highway. You are going 85 mph when you are pulled over and ticketed for going 20 mph over the speed limit. The legislators intended to say 65 mph. Going 85 mph when they intended the limit to be 65 mph, should you pay the hefty fine for speeding at 20 mph over the intended speed limit?
Just checking to see if you really believe the crap you say. You appear to reach deep down into your bowels to excrete your turds of thought.
You will find it frequently said in judicial opinions of my court and others that the judge's objective in interpreting a statute is to give effect to "the intent of the legislature." This principle, in one form or another, goes back at least as far as Blackstone. Unfortunately, it does not square with some of the (few) generally accepted concrete rules of statutory construction. One is the rule that when the text of a statute is clear, that is the end of the matter. Why should that be so, if what the legislature intended, rather than what it said, is the object of our inquiry? In selecting the words of the statute, the legislature might have misspoken. Why not permit that to be demonstrated from the floor debates? Or indeed, why not accept, as proper material for the court to consider, later explanations by the legislators — a sworn affidavit signed by the majority of each house, for example, as to what they really meant?
Source: Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation, p. 16
The evidence suggests that, despite frequent statements to the contrary, we do not really look for subjective legislative intent.
Source: Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation, p. 17
"A Matter of Interpretation," Federal Courts and the Law, by Antonin Scalia, 1997. This book contains an essay by Antonin Scalia and responses to that essay by professors Ronald Dworkin, Mary Ann Glendon, Laurence Tribe, and Gordon Wood. There is a final response by Antonin Scalia.
Laurence Tribe, pp. 65-6
Let me begin with my principal area of agreement with Justice Scalia. Like him, I believe that when we ask what a legal text means — what it requires of us, what it permits us to do, and what it forbids — we ought not to be inquiring (except perhaps very peripherally) into the ideas, intentions, or expectations subjectively held by whatever particular persons were, as a historical matter, involved in drafting, promulgating, or ratifying the text in question. To be sure, those matters, when reliably ascertainable, might shed some light on otherwise ambiguous or perplexing words or phrases - by pointing us, as readers, toward the linguistic frame of reference within which the people to whom those words or phrases were addressed would have "translated" and thus understood them. But such thoughts and beliefs can never substitute for what was in fact enacted as law. Like Justice Scalia, I never cease to be amazed by the arguments of judges, lawyers, or others who proceed as though legal texts were little more than interesting documentary evidence of what some lawgiver had in mind. And, like the justice, I find little to commend the proposition that anyone ought, in any circumstances I can imagine, to feel legally bound to obey another's mere wish or thought, or legally bound to act in accord with another's mere hope or fear.
Aldridge v. Williams, 44 U.S. 9, 24 (1845)
In expounding this law, the judgment of the Court cannot in any degree be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself, and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.
United States v Union Pacific Railroad Company, 91 U.S. 72 (1875)
In construing an act of Congress, we are not at liberty to recur to the views of individual members in debate nor to consider the motives which influenced them to vote for or against its passage. The act itself speaks the will of Congress, and this is to be ascertained from the language used. But courts, in construing a statute, may with propriety recur to the history of the times when it was passed, and this is frequently necessary in order to ascertain the reason as well as the meaning of particular provisions in it. Aldridge v. Williams, 3 How. 24; Preston v. Browder, 1 Wheat. 115, 120 [argument of counsel -- omitted].
Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244, 254 (1901)
In expounding this law, the judgment of the Court cannot in any degree be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself, and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.
This is a case in which no reasonable person can accept that the legislature would make such a mistake. It therefore doesn't work as an analogy.
But if for some reason such a thing happened, and the debates on the statute showed that they were clearly specifying 65, but the final bill ended up passing with the wrong number in it, then the court, (if it ever got that far) would be right in throwing out the case because it was simply a mistake in how the law was written.
But that would require a competent intelligent judge and we have a big shortage of those in this country.
One is the rule that when the text of a statute is clear, that is the end of the matter.
That's a good rule, but that clearly isn't the case when we are referring to the 14th amendment. The original draft was clearer, but what they ended up with as the final verbiage could easily be misread into a wrong interpretation, as has been done.
Let me give you George Will's good essay on this topic.
It used to be quite easy to find, but now all a search returns is a lot of propaganda spew from the usual liars.
Ann Coulter has a good essay on this topic as well.
Aldridge v. Williams, 44 U.S. 9, 24 (1845)
And I don't care about your citing of court cases. I don't regard "precedent" as a substitute for "first principles". (Which is the methodology used in the Scientific community.)