Stanford historian Jonathan Gienapp’s new book, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique, is an important shot across the bow of a venerable legal tradition. Using the tools of a historian, Gienapp aims to draw the methods of public meaning originalism into question. In this symposium, Law & Liberty contributors offer responses from both legal and historical perspectives.
Gienapp’s new book is a serious historical attack on originalism, but it falls short of vanquishing it entirely.
Jonathan Gienapp seeks to use the historian’s tools to challenge originalism, but in the process he neglects the text of the Constitution itself.