No. US courts consider both, to the extent that it’s a bright-line divider between “conservative” judges and “liberal” ones, where the former are far more likely to profess strict adherence to the text of the law (particularly constitutional law).

In any case, there is always a difference between the “intent” of a large and diverse body of politicians, and the actual text of a law. Any practical legal system must take it into consideration.

Is this a different meaning of "conservative" and "liberal" from the political sides, or is this reply blatantly partisan?

> where the former are far more likely to profess strict adherence to the text of the law (particularly constitutional law)

This is a fiction and just an excuse conservative justices use to make conservative rulings when they don't like a law.

They are perfectly fine to abandon the text of the law whenever it doesn't move forward a conservative agenda. The shining example of this is the voting rights act. Something never amended or repealed by congress but slowly dismantled by the court counter to both the intent and the text of the law.

And if you don't believe me, I suggest reading over the Shelby County v. Holder [1] decision because they put it in black and white.

> Nearly 50 years later, they are still in effect; indeed, they have been made more stringent, and are now scheduled to last until 2031. There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.

IE "We know the law says this, and it's still supposed to be in effect. But we don't like what it does so we are canceling it based on census data".

[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/529/

I’m not saying it’s true or false. Hypocrisy is universal to politics, and it’s trivial to find examples throughout US history on all sides of the political spectrum. I’m just saying that the issue of strict interpretation is so fundamental to the US legal system that it’s a core philosophical debate for judges.

> This is a fiction and just an excuse conservative justices use to make conservative rulings when they don't like a law.

Isn't this the other way around? If you cite "the spirit of the law" then you're ignoring the text in order to do whatever you want.

Finding a "conservative" judge who does the latter is evidence that the particular judge is hypocrite rather than any argument that ignoring what the law actually says is the right thing to do.

But you also picked kind of a bad example, because that wasn't a case about how to interpret the law, it was about whether the law was unconstitutional.

That's an uncharitable reading. Citing the "the spirit of the law" is not automatically ignoring the text in order to do whatever you want. It can be "how do I apply this archaic text about oxen (or whatever) to current events". Maybe the meaning is that stealing stuff in general is frowned upon, not just oxen. Or should we focus on how a Chevrolet Corvette is definitely not an ox?

Interpreting constitutions and very old laws requires a different frame than modern laws that merely say something different than you'd like them to.

Why does the First Amendment say "freedom of speech, or of the press" and make no mention of radio or TV or the internet? Because, of course, it was enacted in 1791. The drafters can't be expected to have listed things that didn't exist yet and it's obvious to everyone that it's meant to apply to this category of things even if we're now using fiber optics and satellites instead of dead trees.

But if you're interpreting a law from 20 years ago instead of 200 and nothing relevant has changed that the drafters couldn't have predicted when it was enacted, the fact that someone is doing what you said instead of what you meant is entirely down to you being bad at saying what you mean and that ought to be on you rather than on them.

That doesn't jibe with my understanding. For one thing, "interpreting the law as written" is impossible on its face. You need to have an understanding of what it means, i.e. interpret it. And not only that, isn't the whole deal with Common Law that the judge, judges?

IIRC a common law maxim oft repeated said something like: “a judge doesn’t make a ruling because it is right, the ruling is right because the judge has ruled it.”

> in the US, courts always literally interpret the law as written

I think lots of courts claim this, and none actually do.

It’s the same problem as those reading the Scripture literally. You can’t. You are reading a translation, for starters. To come even close, you need a subtle understanding of semite languages, culture and Greek, depending on your denomination. You need some guidance when reading, whether that is the Holy Ghost, your pastor, or a decade or two of yeshiva school.

The problem here is that people need some way to know if doing something will incur a penalty before they actually do it.

One way to do that is to interpret the law strictly according to the text, or in the case of ambiguity to choose the interpretation that benefits the accused rather than the government. Then you could just read the law to know if it prohibits what you want to do, because unless it unambiguously does, then it doesn't. And then if the government doesn't like it once they see someone doing that, it's up to them to change the law.

Another is to give people a way to get clarification ahead of time. This is called advisory opinions and governments generally hate them because as soon as you allow it, the government is going to be absolutely swamped with requests for clarification because everybody wants to pre-clear everything they're going to do rather than take the risk of getting punished for doing something without clearing it. But in order for this to work, getting a clarification has to be cheap, because "pay a million dollars for an advisory opinion to avoid the risk of a million dollar fine" isn't a real solution to the problem of people getting punished when the law is unclear.

So the first one is actually better, the only "problem" with it is that you need the government to be paying attention and promptly rework the law when it isn't having the intended effect, otherwise you'll have people complaining about it because in the meantime there is a dumb law on the books. But if your government is bad at making good laws then you're going to have a bad time no matter what.

> Another is to give people a way to get clarification ahead of time. This is called advisory opinions and governments generally hate them because as soon as you allow it, the government is going to be absolutely swamped with requests for clarification because everybody wants to pre-clear everything they're going to do rather than take the risk of getting punished for doing something without clearing it. But in order for this to work, getting a clarification has to be cheap, because "pay a million dollars for an advisory opinion to avoid the risk of a million dollar fine" isn't a real solution to the problem of people getting punished when the law is unclear.

A partial solution to this problem is: write laws in a way that need a lot less clarification because there is rarely a need for it because the laws are thought out so well.

I too would like a free pony.

This is rather about free ensurance that the country won't use violence (the state authority) against you.

It's pretty obvious that they don't currently write laws that way, so the question is, what do you propose to change that would cause them to?

A very first step could be to to brutally expose every politician who voted for such shittily designed laws.

Not doing that is a civic duty that I expect from every politician who wants to be considered to be more trustworthy than a child molester who has relapsed several times.

Nope, you need something more systemic than that. Every incumbent politician has voted for shitty laws because if you don't vote for the omnibus full of shitty laws when your party is in the majority and they need your vote then you become a pariah and then your constituents vote you out because pariahs can't accomplish any of the other things they want. And fresh faces wouldn't inherently change the incentives there.

You need something like, ban omnibus bills with a single subject matter rule. Replace first-past-the-post with score voting to dissolve the two-party system. Add new checks and balances so that someone with a better structural incentive to reject bad laws is in a position to veto them, like the US Senate used to be before the 17th amendment.

Or in the EU the structural problems will be different and you may need something different, but you still need something or the status quo tomorrow will be what it was yesterday.