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originalism



  • We Don't Need to Pretend Clarence Thomas Can Read the Founders' Minds

    by Heidi Li Feldman and Dahlia Lithwick

    The approach to "original intent" laid out in recent gun control rulings imagines the founders as capable only of the most cramped and limited understanding of the function of law in a society, argue a legal scholar and veteran court reporter. 



  • Originalism Will Kill Women

    by Madiba K. Dennie

    "Originalist ideology glorifies an era of blatant oppression along racial, gender, and class lines, transforming that era’s lowest shortcomings into our highest standards."



  • Does Justice Jackson Offer a Path to Defend Rights Through Originalism?

    by Evan Turiano

    Abolitionists and the drafters of the Reconstruction Amendments understood that the legitimacy of broader claims to rights and citizenship depended on making a claim on the purposes set forth for the Constitution. Ketanji Brown Jackson's recent voting rights dissent suggests she hopes to revive that tradition. 


  • Lincoln Would have Had an Answer for the "Originalists"

    by Richard Striner

    The 16th President looked to the constitutional crises of his time and asked whether the document was created to serve the people or the other way around. Today he might ask the same of the Supreme Court. 



  • What Conservative Justices Get Wrong About the Founders

    by Timothy C. Leech

    It's preposterous to argue that the Founders, men of the Enlightenment generation, would have intended for the constitution they drafted to be immutable and unchanging. 



  • Originalism is Just Selective History

    by David H. Gans

    "This is a Court that insists it is following history and tradition where they lead, while cherry-picking the history it cares about to reach conservative results."



  • On the Historical Dilettantes Practicing Originalism

    by Joshua Zeitz

    "The functional problem with originalism is that it requires a very, very firm grasp of history — a grasp that none of the nine justices, and certainly few of their 20-something law clerks, freshly minted from J.D. programs, possess."