American Originals 0
In the Roanoke Times, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein points out three major issues with Constitutional “originalism,” the theory the U. S. Constitution should be interpreted as if the horse were still the primary mode of transportation and outhouses the primary sanitation device. Here’s the first:
It seems like an appealing argument, but it faces three objections. The first is historical. Did those who ratified the Constitution embrace originalism? If not, originalism turns out to be self-contradictory, because the original understanding rejected originalism as Scalia and Thomas understand it.
Sunstein is charitable to treat originalism as a subject of polite discourse.
It is, at its origination and in its manifestation, an intellectual scam, a pretty theory to give legitimacy to those who would return our social structures to status quo ante bellum (and you know to which bellum I refer).
