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CULTURE✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Originalism: What it is, what it isn’t and why it’s the most democratic option for the Supreme Court
Filed 1h ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk
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Corncob
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Aliceinthealice · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
As the Supreme Court returns for its new term, a law professor and former Scalia clerk lays out the case for originalism, the doctrine holding that the Constitution means what its original readers understood it to mean. The piece traces its rise from Reagan's appointment of Scalia in 1986 through its current dominance among the justices, including Amy Coney Barrett.
The essay addresses common criticisms: that originalism freezes the law, that it's a cover for conservative outcomes, and that relying on the understanding of a document written when Black people and women couldn't vote is itself undemocratic. Its answer to each is essentially the same — whatever originalism's flaws, the alternative of judges reinterpreting freely is worse, so history, however ambiguous, is 'the lesser evil.'
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Every argument in here boils down to 'trust us, the other guys are worse,' which is the same pitch you get from a fellow selling extended warranties on a truck he won't let you test drive. Maybe originalism is right and maybe it isn't, but an essay that spends this much energy explaining what critics have wrong about a philosophy written by its own former clerk isn't exactly a neutral tour guide. The most honest line in it is the one where even the method's own champion called it the lesser evil, not the good one.
