Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Even the Founders Didn’t Believe in Originalism - The Atlantic

In his 1985 article "The Original Understanding of Original Intent," the law professor H. Jefferson Powell laid out strong evidence that the Framers of the Constitution never meant their own intent to be controlling. At the Philadelphia Convention, the Framers explicitly indicated that they did not want their specific intentions to control the Constitution's interpretation. 

Years later, James Madison maintained that the Philadelphia proceedings "can have no authoritative character" and that the document coming out of it "was nothing more than the draft of a plan, nothing but a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people, speaking through [the state] Conventions" that ratified the Constitution in 1787–90. The delegates also took steps to shield convention records from public view. They met under a rule of secrecy and preserved the records' confidentiality when they adjourned by depositing the documents with George Washington. The records remained in "confidential limbo" until 1818, when John Quincy Adams organized and published them.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/supreme-court-originalism-constitution-framers-judicial-review/671334/


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