Democracy and upholding it

 I first wanted to mention a part of Scalia's argument we talked about in our tutorials on Tuesday. He argued that interpretation based on legislative intent was inconsistent with democracy because it gives judges excessive power in interpreting the law, along with preventing the people from even knowing what the law is. However, Dworkin pointed to a counter that I did not think of when reading which is that the constitution should reflect the will of the elected officials and thus the people by proxy. These both strike me as 'democratic' and I must admit, I am unsure of how to weigh the costs and benefits of each. Is one more fundamental than the other. Or is it a maximum democracy game and we have to try to quantify the loss of the laws reflecting the will of the people and the people knowing what the laws are? Most relevantly, have we reached a point in the argument where if the people have the power in making the law, they are destined to not know what it is?

Finally, I wanted to bring up a larger point that came up in my tutorial with Tim. We have spent much time arguing over how to interpret the law. Dworkin's distinction discusses the intended consequences lawmaker's had when writing the laws. To me, it begs the question of why. The big picture 'why' we have laws seems obvious. The fundamental purpose is the laws are necessary for organized society because we, humans, like society. We like society because it offers of security and peace. If these are the grounds for writing laws, I question whether there can be some way of interpreting the laws that undermines this primary function. Even if a law appears to be written in a way that would compromise the security of society, I seem to believe that it must, by definition of any formally written laws, be interpreted in a way to uphold society. 

To clarify, interpreting a law in a way that causes short term harm would not count as undermining its fundamental purpose provided there were some good reason for that interpretation such as consistency etc. However, if it was interpreted so that modern society would fail, wouldn't that be a wrong interpretation because then the law failed to do what it was supposed to? Obviously, determining when society would fail would be argued heavily, certainly in a politically charged manor, but I think the point stands. I did not come to a satisfying conclusion in my tutorial and want to talk more. 

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