The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel | Esenberg: In replacing Justice Scalia, Senate has duty of ‘advise and consent’

WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg writing in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about the Senate’s proper role in the selection of Justice Scalia’s replacement.

“To that end, he championed interpretive methods — ways of deciding cases — that limited judicial power and discretion. He was a champion of “textualism,” arguing that constitutional and statutory language should be read to mean what it says. (It would surprise the general public to know that this common-sense approach is quite controversial among certain elements of the legal community.) Justice Scalia was committed to the notion that, if the language of a law is not clear, judges should not simply give it their preferred meaning, but should attempt to discern its “original meaning,” that is, determine what it meant to those who adopted it.”

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