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Constitutional Law

Selected Works

Selected Works

2009

Originalism

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Why Justice Scalia Should Be A Constitutional Comparativist ... Sometimes, David Gray Aug 2009

Why Justice Scalia Should Be A Constitutional Comparativist ... Sometimes, David Gray

David C. Gray

The burgeoning literature on transjudicialism and constitutional comparativism generally reaffirms the familiar lines of contest between textualists and those more inclined to read the Constitution as a living document. As a consequence, it tends to be politicized, if not polemic. This article begins to shift the debate toward a more rigorous focus on first principles. In particular, it argues that full faith to the basic commitments of originalism, as advanced in Justice Scalia's writings, opinions, and speeches, requires domestic courts to consult contemporary foreign sources when interpreting universalist language found in the Constitution. While the article does not propose a …


The New Originalism Meets The Fourteenth Amendment: Original Public Meaning And The Problem Of Incorporation, Lawrence Rosenthal Dec 2008

The New Originalism Meets The Fourteenth Amendment: Original Public Meaning And The Problem Of Incorporation, Lawrence Rosenthal

Lawrence Rosenthal

This paper, prepared for a symposium on the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment at the University of San Diego's Institute for Constitutional Originalism, examines the historical case for incorporation within the Fourteenth Amendment of the rights in first eight amendments to the Constitution in light of the recent turn in thinking about originalist methods of constitutional interpretation. In recent decades, the historical case for incorporation has made something of a comeback, resting on strong evidence that many of the key framers of the Fourteenth Amendment considered the first eight amendments to be among the privileges and immunities of …