Law is an interpretive enterprise. To grasp the meaning of any corpus of law, whether it is found in a statute, a series of common law decisions, or a constitution, requires an interpretation of the texts which comprise the law in question. The interpretation of legal texts is informed and disciplined by the principles which best support those texts as perceived by present day readers. The best interpretation is the one which both coheres with the body of law interpreted (fits the substance of past decisions), and is consistent with the most principled justification for those past decisions.