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Originalism is a
legal theory Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...
in the United States which bases constitutional,
judicial The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...
, and
statutory A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wil ...
interpretation of text on the original understanding at the time of its adoption. Proponents of the theory object to judicial activism and other interpretations related to a living constitution framework. Instead, originalists argue for democratic modifications of laws through the
legislature A legislature (, ) is a deliberative assembly with the legal authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country, nation or city on behalf of the people therein. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial power ...
or through
constitutional amendment A constitutional amendment (or constitutional alteration) is a modification of the constitution of a polity, organization or other type of entity. Amendments are often interwoven into the relevant sections of an existing constitution, directly alt ...
. Originalism consists of a family of different theories of constitutional interpretation and can refer to original intent or original meaning. Critics of originalism often turn to the competing concept of the Living Constitution, which asserts that a constitution should evolve and be interpreted based on the context of current times. Originalism should not be confused with
strict constructionism In the United States, strict constructionism is a particular Philosophy of law, legal philosophy of judicial interpretation that limits or restricts the powers of the federal government only to those ''expressly'', i.e., explicitly and clearly, ...
. Contemporary originalism emerged during the 1980s and greatly influenced American legal culture, practice, and academia. Over time, originalism became more popular and gained mainstream acceptance by 2020.


History

Proponents of originalism argue that originalism was the primary method of legal interpretation in America from the time of its founding until the time of the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...
, when competing theories of interpretation grew in prominence.


Modern

Jurist
Robert Bork Robert Heron Bork (March 1, 1927 – December 19, 2012) was an American legal scholar who served as solicitor general of the United States from 1973 until 1977. A professor by training, he was acting United States Attorney General and a judge on ...
is credited with proposing the first modern theory of originalism in his 1971 law review article, ''Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems'', published in '' The Yale Law Journal''. He noted that without specification in a constitutional text, judges are free to input their own values while interpreting a constitution. Bork proposed one principled method to avoid this: for judges to "take from the document rather specific values that text or history show the framers actually to have intended and which are capable of being translated into principled rules." By following the original meaning, an originalist Supreme Court would therefore "need make no fundamental value choices," and its rulings would be restrained. Law professor Raoul Berger expanded on the theory in '' Government by Judiciary'' (1977), positing that the rulings by the Warren and Burger Courts were illegitimate, as they deviated from the Constitution's original intent. In 1985, Edwin Meese,
United States Attorney General The United States attorney general is the head of the United States Department of Justice and serves as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal government of the United States, federal government. The attorney general acts as the princi ...
under President
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...
, advanced a constitutional jurisprudence based on original intent in a speech before the
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...
, a jurisprudence that "would produce defensible principles of government that would not be tainted by ideological predilection." A few months after the speech, Justice William Brennan rejected Meese's view, claiming that the original intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States was indiscernible, and that text could only be understood in present terms. During the 1980s, liberal members of the legal academy criticized the original intent formulated by Bork, Berger, and Meese. Serious opposition, beginning in law schools, evolved from debates in singular law review articles to books. In 1980,
Paul Brest Paul Brest (born 1940) is an American legal scholar who is a former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a former dean of Stanford Law School. He is credited with coining the name originalism to describe a particular appro ...
, who later became the dean of Stanford Law School, published "The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding," an article whose criticism of originalism proved formative and influential.; . Brest argued that a collective intent among the Founding Fathers of the United States was nonexistent and attempting to do so would be extremely difficult. He also posited that historical changes between the time of adoption to the present made originalism inapplicable in areas such as free speech,
freedom of religion Freedom of religion or religious liberty, also known as freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice ...
,
federalism Federalism is a mode of government that combines a general level of government (a central or federal government) with a regional level of sub-unit governments (e.g., provinces, State (sub-national), states, Canton (administrative division), ca ...
, and gender discrimination. Other scholars of the period adopted and expanded Brest's critiques, including H. Jefferson Powell and
Ronald Dworkin Ronald Myles Dworkin (; December 11, 1931 – February 14, 2013) was an American legal philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law. At the time of his death, he was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at ...
. Brest and Powell suggested versions of originalism that sought higher purposes than a specific framer's intent, leading to a shift in the dominant form of originalism from original intent to the original public understanding. The debate grew more heated with the failed Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork in 1986 with the 1990s seeing originalism becoming a broadly endorsed view in the conservative legal movement. The Department of Justice under the Ronald Reagan administration played an important role in lending legitimacy to originalism in the 1980s.


Types

In May 2024, conservative justices on the Supreme Court are reported to be considering new alternative interpretations of originalism.


Original intent

The historical arguments made by Hugo Black in '' Everson v. Board of Education'' relied entirely on historical evidence of the views of Madison and Jefferson and the appropriateness of interpreting the
Establishment Clause In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The ''Establishment Clause'' an ...
based on that evidence. Edwin Meese once remarked that Black's record was evidence that "jurisprudence of original intention is not some recent conservative ideological creation".


Original public understanding

Original public understanding originalism bases the meaning of a constitutional provision on how the public which ratified it would have generally understood it to mean. Antonin Scalia was one of its most prominent theorists. The conservative originalist movement spearheaded by Raoul Berger in the 1980s was a call for judicial restraint but over the years important differences have developed among originalist scholars. Justice Amy Coney Barrett explains:
A faithful judge resists the temptation to conflate the meaning of the Constitution with the judge’s own political preference; judges who give into that temptation exceed the limits of their power by holding a statute unconstitutional when it is not. That was the heart of the originalist critique of the Warren and Burger Courts. At the same time, fidelity will inevitably require a court to hold some statutes unconstitutional.
Barrett, who has been described as a protégé of Scalia's, said at her confirmation hearing that she interprets the Constitution "as text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it."


Debate

The originalism debate has divided the American public since the school desegregation decision in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the ...
''. Justices Antonin Scalia, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and
Neil Gorsuch Neil McGill Gorsuch ( ; born August 29, 1967) is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court ...
describe themselves as originalists in scholarly writings and public speeches.


Critics

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, a frequent critic of conservative originalism, argues that some aspects of the constitution were intentionally broad and vague to allow for future generations to interpret them along with the times. Michael Waldman argues that originalism is a new concept, and not one espoused by the founders. According to a 2021 paper in the ''Columbia Law Review'', the Founding Fathers did not include a
nondelegation doctrine The doctrine of nondelegation (or non-delegation principle) is the theory that one branch of government must not authorize another entity to exercise the power or function which it is constitutionally authorized to exercise itself. It is wikt:exp ...
in the Constitution and saw nothing wrong with delegations as a matter of legal theory, contrary to the claims of some originalists. Columbia Law School legal scholar Jamal Greene argues that originalism is remarkably unpopular outside the United States (including Canada, South Africa, India, Israel, and most of Europe), where judicial minimalism or textualism are the recommended responses to judicial activism. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. described originalism as "arrogance cloaked as humility" during a 1985 speech at Georgetown University. In this speech, he also stated “It is arrogant to pretend that from our vantage we can gauge accurately the intent of the framers", and that politicians that claim to do so are motivated purely by political reasons, as they “have no familiarity with the historical record." Harvard Law School legal scholar Richard H. Fallon Jr. argues at length that the Supreme Court Justices who claim to be Originalists actually apply Originalism in a highly selective manner "which typically abets substantively conservative decisionmaking."


Related positions


International law and originalism

Many Originalists reject any consideration of
International law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...
(with an exception for British law before 1791). Antonin Scalia wrote that "We must never forget that it is a Constitution for the United States of America that we are expounding. . . . Where there is not first a settled consensus among our own people, the views of other nations, however enlightened the Justices of this Court may think them to be, cannot be imposed upon Americans through the Constitution."


Strict constructionism

Scalia differentiated the two by pointing out that, unlike an originalist, a strict constructionist would not acknowledge that ''he uses a cane'' means ''he walks with a cane'' (because, strictly speaking, this is not what ''he uses a cane'' means). Scalia averred that he was "not a strict constructionist, and no-one ought to be"; he goes further, calling strict constructionism "a degraded form of textualism that brings the whole philosophy into disrepute". Legal scholar Randy Barnett asserts that originalism is a theory of ''interpretation'' and that constructionism is only appropriate when deriving the original intent proves difficult.


Declarationism

Declarationism is a legal philosophy that incorporates the
United States Declaration of Independence The Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America in the original printing, is the founding document of the United States. On July 4, 1776, it was adopted unanimously by the Second Continen ...
into the body of case law on level with the
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
. It holds that the Declaration is a
natural law Natural law (, ) is a Philosophy, philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts ...
document and so that natural law has a place within American jurisprudence. During the 1860s, Senator
Charles Sumner Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American ...
heralded declarationism as justifying all
human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
legislation without the need for the ultimately ratified Reconstruction Amendments. Harry V. Jaffa and Clarence Thomas have been cited as proponents of this school of thought.


See also

* Living Constitution * Unconstitutional constitutional amendment


References


References

* Barnett, Randy E. (2004). ''Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. . * * * * * * * * Kesavan, Vasan and Paulsen, Michael Stokes
"The Interpretive Force of the Constitution's Secret Drafting History"
91 ''Georgetown Law Journal'' 1113 (2003). * Lawson, Gary S.br>"On Reading Recipes — and Constitutions"
85 ''Georgetown Law Journal'' 1823 (1997). * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

*
Why Originalism Is So Popular
(January 13, 2011) by Eric A. Posner, ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
''
Trumping Precedent with Original Meaning: Not as Radical as It Sounds
(4 May 2005) by Randy Barnett *


External links


The Originalism Blog
at the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism at the University of San Diego School of Law
Lecture
by Antonin Scalia at Woodrow Wilson Center via Center for Individual Freedom comparing and contrasting originalism from the "living constitution" approach (2005) {{Tea Party movement Supreme Court of the United States Conservatism in the United States United States constitutional law Intention Theories of constitutional interpretation