Nine Reasons that “Originalism” Isn’t Really a Thing for Supreme Court Justices
Published in
5 min readOct 17, 2020
“Originalism” may be a reasonable way to interpret 99.99% of Constitutional questions that come up. But the Supreme Court exists to handle the other .01%. Justices of our highst court need to have more than one tool in their belt.
- “Originalism” pretends to distinguish itself from other theories of interpretation but really doesn’t. And it creates an imaginary opponent called “Living Constitutionalism,” which (originalists pretend) means judges who disregard the plain meaning of the text and just make the Constitution mean anything they want it to mean. This is just silly. Every Article III judge in American history has paid close attention to the original meanings of the Constitution, and every judge has paid attention to other things too.
- “Originalism” is a constant element of every act of interpretation of the Constitution (and of everything else). Every justice who has ever sat on the Supreme Court can reasonably be called an “originalist.” It is not a self-contained judicial philosophy; it is a part of every judicial philosophy. There just aren’t judges out there saying things like, “the Third Amendment says that the government…
