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Living Originalism And Living Constitutionalism As Moral Readings Of The American Constitution, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

With this event – A Symposium on Jack Balkin’s Living Originalism and David Strauss’s The Living Constitution – we launch a Boston University School of Law series of symposia on significant recent books in law. The distinctive format is to pick two significant books that join issue on an important topic, to invite the author of each book to write an essay on the other book, and to invite several Boston University School of Law faculty to write an essay on one or both books.

What are the justifications for pairing Balkin’s Living Originalism1 and Strauss’s The Living Constitution2 in …

Why The 'Originalism' In 'Living Originalism'?, Hugh Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

Jack Balkin’s "Living Originalism" (2011), together with the companion volume "Constitutional Redemption," is an extraordinary achievement that secures his position in the front rank of American constitutional theorists. In those works, Balkin develops a constitutional theory he identifies alternatively as “living originalism” and as “framework originalism.” In this latter expression, Balkin distinguishes two senses of the term “framework.” In the first sense of “framework,” the Constitution establishes a framework for governance and politics. The second sense of “framework” derives from the first. Governance, Balkin argues, involves state-building and constitutional construction by the political branches, not just by the courts. Social …

The Balkinization Of Originalism, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

This Article suggests that, with the publication of Jack Balkin's Living Originalism, we are witnessing the "Balkanization" of originalism (when originalism splits into warring camps) along with the "Balkinization" of originalism (when even Balkin, hitherto a pragmatic living constitutionalist, becomes an originalist). It goes on to argue that Balkin's living originalism is what Ronald Dworkin has called a "moral reading" of the Constitution, for it conceives the Constitution as embodying abstract moral and political principles, not codifying concrete historical rules or practices. Furthermore, despite important differences, there are unmistakable affinities between Balkin's commitment to interpret the Constitution so as to …