The Supreme Court’s Faux ‘Originalism’
As usual the opponents of originalism describe its very real detriment, that knowledge of history (and more specifically linguistic history &#x2F; etymology) is vital to originalism while failing to offer any alternative view that doesn&#x27;t make the judiciary into a super-legislature.<p>Ironically in this case they make a great case (in my naive opinion) for a valid originalist take to regulate weapons. If only the debate on the 2nd Amendment could be about these historical points instead of one side arguing for originalism with the other side arguing for a &#x27;living constitution&#x27; where any debate about the original meaning of laws is irrelevant.<p>Many might object at this point to say the the originalists are fake, they use the philosophy of originalism as a propaganda tool to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses. This argument holds no weight as long as the other side rejects originalism as a fundamental presupposition of jurisprudence.<p>In other words, contemporary American politics gives you two options for viewing our current legal system: either it&#x27;s a super-legislature where justices are just senators-for-life and can as a group overrule anything on a whim with no repercussions or it&#x27;s a group whose job is to interpret the text of existing laws applying the intent of our real legislature to actual situations that occur. If the former, then our country has very little hope. If the latter then we can work together to get principled justices who care about textualism.<p>The article is right that a textualist shouldn&#x27;t always be allowed to interpret along the lines of what they think is right, but you can&#x27;t throw out the baby with the bathwater! Their argument is: originalists are unprincipled therefore originalism is wrong. This holds no water for me.