Soru

The passage provided below is followed by a question. Based on the passage, choose the best answer to the question.

In contemporary constitutional theory, the debate between intentionalists—who argue that the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed by the specific, subjective aims of its drafters—and textualists, who prioritize the original public meaning of the text itself, has grown increasingly fractured. Intentionalists often rely on the assertion that a text, divorced from the communicative intent of its author, is merely a collection of arbitrary symbols. To properly adjudicate a dispute, they argue, a judge must ascertain what the drafters specifically hoped to achieve.

Textualists typically counter this by emphasizing the epistemological impossibility of discovering a single, unified intent among a multi-member drafting body, a critique that highlights the fragmented nature of legislative histories and the often contradictory statements left behind by various framers. However, a more fundamental critique of intentionalism does not rest on the practical difficulty of discerning intent, but rather on the logical implications of elevating subjective intent over enacted text. Suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, the intentionalist premise that a unified, perfectly cohesive, and historically discoverable intent does indeed exist and can be flawlessly reconstructed by modern jurists using advanced historical methodologies. Even under this highly idealized condition, the intentionalist paradigm falters fundamentally when applied to the core mechanics of democratic lawmaking.

When a legislature or constitutional convention ratifies a text, they are voting on the specific language of the provision, not the unexpressed motivations of the drafters. If a judge were to prioritize the drafters’ subjective intent over the public meaning of the ratified words, the judge would effectively be enforcing a law that was never actually passed. The electorate, and by extension the ratifying body, consents to be governed by the laws as they are written and publicly understood, because it is only the public text that is subjected to the rigorous process of democratic deliberation.

Furthermore, this hypothetical concession reveals a deeper structural flaw in the intentionalist project: it fundamentally misapprehends the enduring function of a written constitution. A constitution is designed not merely to reflect the transient policy preferences or specific societal grievances of its authors at a singular historical moment, but to establish a durable, objective framework of governance capable of guiding future generations. By tethering the binding meaning of the text to unwritten, subjective aims, intentionalists paradoxically undermine the very legal stability they claim to preserve. They render the ratified text a mere evidentiary proxy for historical psychology rather than a binding legal instrument in its own right. Thus, the rejection of intentionalism is justified not merely by the evidentiary hurdles of historical reconstruction, but by the paramount normative requirements of democratic legitimacy and the rule of law.

Which of the following most accurately describes the rhetorical function of the author's hypothetical concession in the second paragraph ('Suppose we grant... reconstructed by modern jurists')?