This book could change the way conservatives read the Constitution

[NWRatCon]

Book review, Washington Post:

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.

https://wapo.st/4f3c2Ti

"What are the chances that, in 2024, a new book could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding? Jonathan Gienapp, a historian at Stanford, has written such a book in “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique.” You read it, and you get vertigo.

Americans have long shared the following view: The United States Constitution consists of a text. You can find it. You can print it and hold it. It’s an object.

Sure, we argue about how to interpret it. Some people, including Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, are “originalists.” They believe that the meaning of the text should be settled by reference to its “original public meaning.” They do not believe in a “living constitution,” whose meaning shifts over time. Over the last generation, originalism, as an approach to constitutional law, has been elaborated and developed (and promoted) with great care.
....
Whatever their differences, all sides agree that the Constitution is a text, a thing, and that its words are the object of interpretation. Against this background, Gienapp’s book comes as a thunderclap. It is directed above all at originalists, who, in his view, misunderstand the founding — not a little but a lot. And although contemporary nonoriginalists are not Gienapp’s target, he has a lot to say to them as well.

It is important to emphasize that Gienapp’s enterprise is one of history, not politics. He is not claiming, for example, that Roe v. Wade was right and that the Supreme Court was wrong to overrule it. He is arguing instead that the past is a foreign country, and we have a lot of trouble understanding it. He thinks that originalists (and most of the rest of us) haven’t got a clue."

This has been my position for years. I'm reading Justice Breyer's book, Reading the Constitution. Now I have to get this one.

 

[Fletch]

It is important to emphasize that Gienapp’s enterprise is one of history, not politics. He is not claiming, for example, that Roe v. Wade was right and that the Supreme Court was wrong to overrule it. He is arguing instead that the past is a foreign country, and we have a lot of trouble understanding it. He thinks that originalists (and most of the rest of us) haven’t got a clue."

This has been my position for years. I'm reading Justice Breyer's book, Reading the Constitution. Now I have to get this one.

What does he mean by that?

 

[eman623]

The Constitution means whatever the left wants it to mean. The words and original meaning don't matter to them.

Few conservatives will read this book and fewer still will be swayed by it.

 

[BirdinHand]

Few conservatives will read this book

Is that something to brag about?

 

[BirdinHand]

Book review, Washington Post:

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.

https://wapo.st/4f3c2Ti

"What are the chances that, in 2024, a new book could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding? Jonathan Gienapp, a historian at Stanford, has written such a book in “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique.” You read it, and you get vertigo.

Americans have long shared the following view: The United States Constitution consists of a text. You can find it. You can print it and hold it. It’s an object.

Sure, we argue about how to interpret it. Some people, including Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, are “originalists.” They believe that the meaning of the text should be settled by reference to its “original public meaning.” They do not believe in a “living constitution,” whose meaning shifts over time. Over the last generation, originalism, as an approach to constitutional law, has been elaborated and developed (and promoted) with great care.
....
Whatever their differences, all sides agree that the Constitution is a text, a thing, and that its words are the object of interpretation. Against this background, Gienapp’s book comes as a thunderclap. It is directed above all at originalists, who, in his view, misunderstand the founding — not a little but a lot. And although contemporary nonoriginalists are not Gienapp’s target, he has a lot to say to them as well.

It is important to emphasize that Gienapp’s enterprise is one of history, not politics. He is not claiming, for example, that Roe v. Wade was right and that the Supreme Court was wrong to overrule it. He is arguing instead that the past is a foreign country, and we have a lot of trouble understanding it. He thinks that originalists (and most of the rest of us) haven’t got a clue."

This has been my position for years. I'm reading Justice Breyer's book, Reading the Constitution. Now I have to get this one.

Thank you - added to my Amazon list.

 

[bubbabgone]

A while back there was an effort to push the idea of "The Constitution is a Living Document".
There were public service ads that popped up on network television pushing that notion.
Wasn't long before people realized it was a load of left wing garbage intended to make them accept what they knew in their hearts and minds was not what the Country is.
Here we are again.
Words don't mean what they say.
Oh well, Jonathan Gienapp's got the same tale to try to sell.

 

[eman623]

Is that something to brag about?

Lies and misinformation. It wasn't bragging.

Any plans to watch Matt Walsh's "Am I racist?"

 

[bubbabgone]

Book review, Washington Post:

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.

...

This has been my position for years. I'm reading Justice Breyer's book, Reading the Constitution. Now I have to get this one.

Thank you - added to my Amazon list.

Alito and Thomas have written books also. Gonna get them too?

 

[jaypatriot]

Book review, Washington Post:

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.

https://wapo.st/4f3c2Ti

"What are the chances that, in 2024, a new book could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding? Jonathan Gienapp, a historian at Stanford, has written such a book in “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique.” You read it, and you get vertigo.

Americans have long shared the following view: The United States Constitution consists of a text. You can find it. You can print it and hold it. It’s an object.

Sure, we argue about how to interpret it. Some people, including Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, are “originalists.” They believe that the meaning of the text should be settled by reference to its “original public meaning.” They do not believe in a “living constitution,” whose meaning shifts over time. Over the last generation, originalism, as an approach to constitutional law, has been elaborated and developed (and promoted) with great care.
....
Whatever their differences, all sides agree that the Constitution is a text, a thing, and that its words are the object of interpretation. Against this background, Gienapp’s book comes as a thunderclap. It is directed above all at originalists, who, in his view, misunderstand the founding — not a little but a lot. And although contemporary nonoriginalists are not Gienapp’s target, he has a lot to say to them as well.

It is important to emphasize that Gienapp’s enterprise is one of history, not politics. He is not claiming, for example, that Roe v. Wade was right and that the Supreme Court was wrong to overrule it. He is arguing instead that the past is a foreign country, and we have a lot of trouble understanding it. He thinks that originalists (and most of the rest of us) haven’t got a clue."

This has been my position for years. I'm reading Justice Breyer's book, Reading the Constitution. Now I have to get this one.

How many Americans are actually going to read a book about Constitutional originalism?
Who even knows what the term 'originalism' means when thinking about the Constitution?

You wrote: "Gienapp’s book comes as a thunderclap. It is directed above all at originalists, who, in his view, misunderstand the founding — not a little but a lot."

What is wrong with today's society thinking in terms of how the creators of the Constitution thought about our society in the 1780s?
Religious people (billions of them) think about how the Bible was written and what Mohammed meant when the Koran was written 1400 years ago.

 

[BirdinHand]

Alito and Thomas have written books also. Gonna get them too?

Titles?

I’ve seen nothing by Alito other than SCOTUS decisions released in a book form.

Thomas has his memoir…has he written anything else?

I don’t tend to be a huge fan of memoirs. Very few that I’ve read have been memorable or worthwhile

 

[BirdinHand]

Lies and misinformation. It wasn't bragging.

Any plans to watch Matt Walsh's "Am I racist?"

Is there a book? Or are you building a straw man?

 

[phoenix2020]

The Constitution means whatever the left wants it to mean. The words and original meaning don't matter to them.

Few conservatives will read this book and fewer still will be swayed by it.

Well, yeah.

Few MAGA know how to read. Anything above a 3rd grade reading level is “word salad” to them. So, obviously, the Constitution is going to be above their literacy level, much less a book about constitutional interpretation.

 

[j brown's body]

A while back there was an effort to push the idea of "The Constitution is a Living Document".
There were public service ads that popped up on network television pushing that notion.
Wasn't long before people realized it was a load of left wing garbage intended to make them accept what they knew in their hearts and minds was not what the Country is.
Here we are again.
Words don't mean what they say.
Oh well, Jonathan Gienapp's got the same tale to try to sell.

The fact is, the Founders had a much narrower view of freedom of speech than we have.

Do you want legal rulings based on their point of view or ours?

 

[j brown's body]

This is what he is talking about.

The Originalists Are Coming for the First Amendment

"With its new term starting this month, the Supreme Court will likely confront calls to upend constitutional law yet again. One very possible target is people’s everyday right to voice their political opinions, to speak up, even just to swear. ...a federal court of appeals decided a First...

debatepolitics.com

"...Recently, Judge Kevin Newsom of the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said it would be “terrific” if courts started asking “what ‘the freedom of speech’ meant to the founders.” In NetChoice LLC v. Paxton... the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit even criticized the challengers of the law for relying on legal precedent rather than the “original public meaning” of the First Amendment.

...During the founding era, the right to free speech was understood much more narrowly than it is today. Something as simple as swearing or voicing unpopular political opinions might land you on the wrong side of the law. If rules from the 1790s were enforced today, citizens could be jailed for criticizing politicians, public figures could freely use defamation law to punish critics and schoolchildren would have few if any free speech rights.

...Historically, the wrong kind of speech could land you in jail. Laws criminalizing blasphemy, government criticism, tepid sexual content and other speech viewed to be bad or harmful were commonplace at the country’s founding. In the 1770s, the Continental Congress outlawed theater because it was viewed as too culturally English. In the 1790s, Congress, controlled by one party, passed a law making it easier to imprison political opponents. Later, Southern states outlawed abolitionist speech. And throughout our history, the government prosecuted undesirable political minorities. This is not a history we should wish to resurrect."

Link

 

[Along Came Jones]

Book review, Washington Post:

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.

https://wapo.st/4f3c2Ti

"What are the chances that, in 2024, a new book could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding? Jonathan Gienapp, a historian at Stanford, has written such a book in “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique.” You read it, and you get vertigo.

A little over a hundred years ago another history purporting to fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding was published. That was Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Beard's thesis centered on property and class interests was controversial from the publication date till 50 years later when his critics declared the book refuted. And yet, I sat through an Economic History of the United States lecture in the early 70s wherein Beard's book was presented as a viable analysis despite alleged flaws of misinterpretation and methodology.

Isn't this founding revisionism in similar to The New York Times' 1619 Project? A reframing of U.S. history as class struggles between poor Whites, greedy merchants, rich slave owners, and the enslaved? And that the constitution was the document constructed to keep the highest rewards flowing to the propertied class?

So, what is a lay person to make of all this revisionism? Me? Since you brought the book to my attention and it bites at my attention, I'll buy and read it. Thanks for that. But I'll also reread and study Joseph L. Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), Book 3, Chapter 5, Rules of Interpretation, in the hopes that the rather long exposition which includes Blackstone's rules provides some grounding in how some early Supreme Court justices may have interpreted the cases before them.

 

[bubbabgone]

Titles?

I’ve seen nothing by Alito other than SCOTUS decisions released in a book form.

Thomas has his memoir…has he written anything else?

I don’t tend to be a huge fan of memoirs. Very few that I’ve read have been memorable or worthwhile

353 books by Supreme Court Justices (UPDATED 11/7/12)

In December 1833, the American Monthly Review commented on a newly published book by Joseph Story. By that time the fifty-four-year-old Supreme Court Justice had written or edited some twelve […]

www.scotusblog.com

So what's your criteria?
And there's a lot of written info by Scalia but this one is on point ...

On Constitutional Interpretation

U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia's speech on Constitutional …

www.goodreads.com

"U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia's speech on Constitutional Interpretation covers the jurisprudential positions of constitutional interpretation: viz. the "originalist" and the "living" constitution. Also mentioned is Scalia's historical look at how the living constitution approach seems to have taken off with the Warren Court, and Scalia (an originalist) has dire warnings for civil liberties under the living consitution [sic] approach.
Gonna add it to your list?

 

[BirdinHand]

353 books by Supreme Court Justices (UPDATED 11/7/12)

In December 1833, the American Monthly Review commented on a newly published book by Joseph Story. By that time the fifty-four-year-old Supreme Court Justice had written or edited some twelve […]

www.scotusblog.com

So what's your criteria?
And there's a lot of written info by Scalia but this one is on point ...

On Constitutional Interpretation

U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia's speech on Constitutional …

www.goodreads.com

"U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia's speech on Constitutional Interpretation covers the jurisprudential positions of constitutional interpretation: viz. the "originalist" and the "living" constitution. Also mentioned is Scalia's historical look at how the living constitution approach seems to have taken off with the Warren Court, and Scalia (an originalist) has dire warnings for civil liberties under the living consitution [sic] approach.
Gonna add it to your list?

Isn’t that just an audio book?

 

[bubbabgone]

The fact is, the Founders had a much narrower view of freedom of speech than we have.

Do you want legal rulings based on their point of view or ours?

Theirs.
Any decisions after that may have had to deal with circumstances unknown at that time but should have used the original words as a guide.
Otherwise it's pretty much a legal free-for-all ... innit?

 

[bubbabgone]

Isn’t that just an audio book?

Doesn't count?

 

[CaughtInThe]

The Constitution means whatever the left wants it to mean.

 

[j brown's body]

What does he mean by that?

"Just what our forefathers did envision, or would have envisioned had they foreseen modern conditions, must be divined from materials almost as enigmatic as the dreams Joseph was called upon to interpret for Pharaoh."

- Justice Robert Jackson

 

[BirdinHand]

Doesn't count?

I can’t do audiobooks.

I read fast, I type fast, my brain moves fast…and audio books are almost painful to me because they tend to move at a much slower pace than my brain does.

I’m also the person that can’t watch a tv show/movie when the sound is even a fraction of a second off from the video. And there are two tvs in my house that absolutely CANNOT be on the same channel at the same time because there is a delay between the two that practically makes me twitchy.

These are all just “me” things


It’s not that it “doesn’t count” it is just a format that doesn’t work with my brain.

 

[BirdinHand]

353 books by Supreme Court Justices (UPDATED 11/7/12)

In December 1833, the American Monthly Review commented on a newly published book by Joseph Story. By that time the fifty-four-year-old Supreme Court Justice had written or edited some twelve […]

www.scotusblog.com

So what's your criteria?
And there's a lot of written info by Scalia but this one is on point ...

On Constitutional Interpretation

U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia's speech on Constitutional …

www.goodreads.com

"U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia's speech on Constitutional Interpretation covers the jurisprudential positions of constitutional interpretation: viz. the "originalist" and the "living" constitution. Also mentioned is Scalia's historical look at how the living constitution approach seems to have taken off with the Warren Court, and Scalia (an originalist) has dire warnings for civil liberties under the living consitution [sic] approach.
Gonna add it to your list?

This is an essay by Scalia from your link that I will add to my list:

A Matter of Interpretation

press.princeton.edu

 

[j brown's body]

Theirs.
Any decisions after that may have had to deal with circumstances unknown at that time but should have used the original words as a guide.
Otherwise it's pretty much a legal free-for-all ... innit?

So you would support punishing swearing and criticism of political leaders because the Founders did?

 

[j brown's body]

Breyer has a good criticism of Originalism because it's idisregard for the conditions of everyday life makes it self-defeating.

"Law is not hard science. It is a codified set of beliefs comprising the rules that all members of society must live by. They agree to abide by those rules, and that agreement cannot be taken for granted. Adopting rigid jurisprudential methods that are divorced from people’s real lives and understandings, I fear, may undermine rather than strengthen that social contract. It risks distancing law from society, creating a system of internal logic that is useful to no one, unresponsive to contemporary life, and unable to safeguard our values and shared commitments. It threatens to weaken our commitment to the rule of law itself."

Link