Majority Opinion and Interpretation

I found Dworkin’s brief argument about Scalia’s confusing and perhaps inconsistent notion of majority opinion as it relates to the judiciary’s rule in textual (and Constitutional) interpretation extremely interesting. Dworkin notes that Scalia’s basic argument for textualism is that it is “undemocratic when a statue is interpreted other than in accordance with the public text that was before legislators when they voted and is available to everyone in the community afterwards” (127). It is for this reason that Scalia holds, “statues do not change” (40). He believes that courts should not interpret them to say what the legislature “intended” the statutes to say, but they can only be overturned or revised by subsequent legislation once the feelings of the majority have shifted. Statutory interpretation therefore seems to be consistent with rule of the majority because the majority in the legislature and the majority elected candidate holding executive office make the laws that are then upheld by the courts. However, with the constitutional interpretation, Dworkin notes Scalia’s reservations for majority rule. He believes that the Founders created a Constitution to prohibit future generations from largely changing the structure of our government and from infringing on basic rights: “the whole purpose [of the Constitution] is to prevent change—to embed certain rights in such a manner that future generations cannot take them away,” for “at the end of the day an evolving constitution will evolve the way the majority wishes” (46, 40). So what do you think? Is Scalia inconsistent? If so, what significance does this inconsistency have for his argument? Is statutory interpretation so fundamentally different than Constitutional interpretation when “the usual principles are being applied to an unusual text”? (37).