Nathan Huffine

Antonin Scalia’s theory of judicial interpretation remains highly relevant in the legal landscape. This paper proposes three problems with Scalia’s textualism-originalism that have yet to be adequately addressed in the legal philosophical literature. The problems are consecutively introduced as the Madisonian Problem, the Promulgation Problem, and the Fairness Problem. To explain these problems, I rely upon an understanding of coherent justification conceptualized by Keith Lehrer, and I utilize Feinbergian and Hobbesian modes of analysis. Key components of Scalia’s textualism-originalism will be developed using Scalia’s public discourse as well as Scalia’s dissent in Morrison v Olsen. Following the three problems, to be proposed in the style of the Lehrerian Critic, I will counter objections to my arguments as well as argue against an alternative form of criticizing Scalia.

Professor William Lane Craig argues that a particular set of concerns about the Christian doctrine of penal substitution (namely, that Jesus of Nazareth was sacrificed for the sins of humanity) can be satisfied. This article provides rebuttals to said replies in an attempt to render plausible the claim that God exists to the extent that God is perfectly just, and that divine justice requires, among other things, that God never engage in the harming of innocents, consistent with any doctrine of retributivism worthy of the name. The doctrine of God, then, must remain consistent with unqualified negative retributivism. Any theism which might suggest otherwise violates such vital considerations of justice and fairness and must be rejected.