Bravo, Matt.

In our common battle against the myth of judicial supremacy, you soundly observe that

“[s]omehow it never seems to occur to most law professors that …the Supreme Court [can’t] judicially change the meaning of the Constitution.” I haven’t yet found the time to complete my reading of Lawrence Solum’s “Semantic Originalism” (which I blogged about briefly here and which Solum has supplemented with a series of responses—Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four—to one critic), but I’m pleased to report that Solum doesn’t suffer from this malady. From his article (pp. 47-49, April 14, 2008 version):

[T]he semantic content of each clause of the Constitution is fixed at the time of utterance [i.e., ratification].… The reason that the Supreme Court today cannot change the semantic content of an utterance made in the past is that such an act is impossible….

The power of the Supreme Court to create legal fictions or tell lies about the meaning of the Constitution cannot change the semantic content of the constitutional text.… The Supreme Court cannot do magic. Legal fictions and lies do not change facts.

Solum of course recognizes that, in light of “the institutions of judicial review and vertical stare decisis, the Supreme Court can change the effective legal meaning of the Constitution” (emphasis added). But all that means is that it can often get away with its lies (or, where willful error is not involved, what I would instead call its mistakes).