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This is hilarious, because I just saw the front page of NYT with a Biden quote on the student loan case ruling: "I think the court misinterpreted the Constitution."
Of course, I happen to totally agree with you that this case was statutory interpretation. If anything, I'm just noticing that this is one of those moments where Biden says something that, had Trump made a similar mistake, it would have been front page news... not because they're cheering on what he said, but because they're aghast about how he could be so ignorant and wrong about this obvious thing (that is a technical little detail, really), and how it must mean that he has no idea what is going on and is therefore incapable to hold office under the 25th Amendment.
I think you're nitpicking here. @Gaashk's comment that it's a literal reading of the Constitution is probably correct. Your quote from the opinion about
is pretty easily understood as saying, "Whelp, a literal reading of the Constitution is that you can't do this. That said, there might be an exception to the literal reading of the Constitution." And sure, they spent most of their time on figuring out whether or not there was an exception for this case, but the result of finding that there isn't an exception is that you just go back to the default of a literal reading of the Constitution.
I would say that it might be misunderstood as saying that, but only by someone who has no actual understanding of the issue. After all, if taken literally, the Equal Protection clause would invalidate all laws, because all laws treat some groups differently than others. "No trucks allowed in tunnel" discrimates against truck drivers, and "people under 16 can't get a driver's license" discrimates against those under 16. That's why courts have said that the Equal Protection Clause is not meant literally: "Statutes create many classifications which do not deny equal protection; it is only "invidious discrimination" which offends the Constitution." Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 US 726, 732 (1963) [citing Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 488-489 (1955) and Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78-79 (1911)).
And, more generally, no justice employs a literal interpretation of the Constitution, nor have any in recent memory, except maybe Justice Black, though the only provision I know of in which he employed literal interpretation was re the free speech clause.
EPC doesn't say that, tho. Like, on its face. Nowhere in the literal words of the clause does it say that the laws cannot make any distinctions for any reason between people.
I think I'm coming around to Barrett's concurrence that sometimes, if you try hard enough to be a moron when reading something, you'll miss the most reasonable interpretation of the literal text. Having a modicum of context informs how you read so that you don't add in things when you're claiming that it's a literal reading.
Yes, it does say that. That is the literal meaning of "equal protection." See Ten Broek, Jacobus, and Joseph Tussman. "The equal protection of the laws." California Law Review 37 (1949): 341, 343 ["Here, then, is a paradox: The equal protection of the laws is a 'pledge of the protection of equal laws.' But laws may classify. And 'the very idea of classification is that of inequality. . . .'" (ellipsis in original)].
But that is exactly why no one interprets the Constitution using the literal meaning of words. "Congress shall make no law" does not mean "no law," and "speech" covers more than literal speech.
Sorry that they struggle to read in the California Law Review. (They try extra hard to read like morons.)
But try. Try in your own words to explain how "equal protection of the laws" means "no possible categorization in laws" means "no laws". It doesn't. It's not there. Clearly, the context, in Barrett's words, is that there are laws. So, given that there are laws, and you're trying to read this sentence about laws literally, please proceed to explain exactly how your literal reading implies that there are no valid laws. What "protection" would these not valid laws be providing?
I think the quote from the law review article makes that clear.
I'm apparently really dumb. Can you help me out? Can you point me to the specific words in the quote from the law review article where they say how "equal protection of the laws" means "no possible categorization in laws" means "no laws"? Can you point me to the specific words in the quote from the law review article where they describe what "protection" hypothetical not valid laws would be providing?
Are you aware that the article is criticizing the literal interpretation? Not endorsing it?
Yes. In order to criticize something, we need to know what that something is. To be perfectly clear, I'm saying that your (and that article's) presentation of the "literal interpretation" is an absurd strawman that cannot possibly be sustained by even just looking at the text. 'Round these parts, we don't really give much weight to random articles criticizing strawmen. The routine is to ignore them, because of course it's easy to beat up strawmen. I'm not even asking you to go so far as to steelman the literal interpretation; I'm just asking you to even state what you think the literal interpretation is in your own words. I think you're avoiding it, because you can't bring yourself to say the words out of your own mouth that are the absurd strawman; you're better than that and it would hurt your sense of personal standards to do it. So, you're trying to offload the dirty work to some random absurd partisan with a pretty bald appeal to authority.
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