In policy contexts (not just political policy, but like, making group decisions of almost any kind), it tends to matter a lot what the author intended, since that’s often a natural schelling point for resolution of ambiguities that later gets referred to.
See for example courts trying to interpret what previous courts intended with a judgement, or what a law was intended to do. Same for company decisions to move ahead with a project. In almost any context with stakes, the intention of the author continues to matter (though how much varies from context to context, though my sense is almost always a good amount).
Yes but it’s also not rare for legal scholars to see “legislative intention” as nothing but a convenient fiction that courts employ to retain some semblance of objectivity. In principle, they could drop such language and refer directly to their interpretation of the statutory text, right? The intellectual labor involved is unchanged: each judge considers their community’s surrounding norms and common sense assumptions to understand what a law is “really” trying to do. Whether or not this interpretation is ascribed to authorial intention is basically superfluous.
The useful thing is the ideas you take away, it’s rarely relevant if the author intended them or not.
In policy contexts (not just political policy, but like, making group decisions of almost any kind), it tends to matter a lot what the author intended, since that’s often a natural schelling point for resolution of ambiguities that later gets referred to.
See for example courts trying to interpret what previous courts intended with a judgement, or what a law was intended to do. Same for company decisions to move ahead with a project. In almost any context with stakes, the intention of the author continues to matter (though how much varies from context to context, though my sense is almost always a good amount).
Yes but it’s also not rare for legal scholars to see “legislative intention” as nothing but a convenient fiction that courts employ to retain some semblance of objectivity. In principle, they could drop such language and refer directly to their interpretation of the statutory text, right? The intellectual labor involved is unchanged: each judge considers their community’s surrounding norms and common sense assumptions to understand what a law is “really” trying to do. Whether or not this interpretation is ascribed to authorial intention is basically superfluous.
At least some scholars see a meaningful difference between “original intent” and “original public meaning.”