Uncle Shemp was alarmingly unexceptional. He had no detectable lifestyle, and his only accomplishment was the fact that he was a lifelong member of the general public.

Chief Justice Roberts does more or less the same thing in dissent: He practices intentions-and-expectations originalism while randomly sprinkling some public-meaning originalism fairy dust over his description of his enterprise, perhaps in the subconscious hope that no one will notice the legerdemain.

It certainly did not denounce as sinful the movement to enserf a large section of the population, any more than it had challenged slavery in the ancient world; that was hardly surprising, since very often great monasteries like Cluny were in the forefront of imposing serfdom on their tenants.

Mr. Spitzer’s defeat of his Democratic opponent […] ended a primary season in which Hillary Rodham Clinton swamped an antiwar challenger for renomination to the Senate.