[ned]

You're correct that that is what I was saying. If you have a different way of looking at it, that you can back up logically, I'd be interested in hearing it.

As I understand your usual test for the soundness of an interpretation, it involves asking the question "Why didn't they just write it the way that you're interpreting it?" So, I guess the question for you would be: If the Fourteenth Amendment was only intended to limit the power of state judges and was not intended to limit the powers of the state legislatures, why couldn't they have just said so?

In other words, I suspect that you for some reason believe that your interpretive process is somehow different than the interpretive processes used by others. You are critical of the way in which others have interpreted the due process clause to "incorporate" the Bill of Rights because you see these people as improperly adding meaning to the Amendment that the draftsmen did not express. But your interpretation is no different in that regard. By exempting state legislatures from the scope of the Amendment, you too are adding meaning that the draftsmen did not express.

You cannot escape the need to provide some meaning to the Constitution's words. You can only choose between alternative meanings.

[inquest]

You are critical of the way in which others have interpreted the due process clause to "incorporate" the Bill of Rights because you see these people as improperly adding meaning to the Amendment that the draftsmen did not express. But your interpretation is no different in that regard. By exempting state legislatures from the scope of the Amendment, you too are adding meaning that the draftsmen did not express.

That's actually not quite the exact criticism I had of tpaine's reasoning. He was trying to make the point that in order to understand what was written, one should examine what someone supposedly intended to be written. What I'm saying, and what I would think is rather self-evident, is that in order to understand what was written, one should examine... what was written. That is, we should look at the text itself and see what kinds of conclusions should be drawn from the words contained therein.

In the case of the due-process clause, for example, it really strains the imagination for me to think that talking about the "process" of law involves any concern about what the law actually says. It looks clear to me that it's only about the way the law is processed - meaning, how it's administered. In the case of the equal-protection clause, I did mention to you on the last thread that I hadn't totally discounted the possibility that it would also apply to legislative acts. It's just a matter of logically examining the implications of that particular conclusion and seeing if it really squares with what the text says. And as for "privileges and immunities", of course, I never would say that it wouldn't apply to legislation, since the amendment actually comes right out and says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall...."