Law Commons^™

A Concise Guide To Using Dictionaries From The Founding Era To Determine The Original Meaning Of The Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article explains how dictionaries published in the Founding Era may provide evidence of the original meaning of the Constitution. In addition, the Article identifies and discusses six potential problems with relying on definitions from these dictionaries, and cautions that these potential problems must be considered when using Founding Era dictionaries either to make claims about the Constitution’s original meaning or to evaluate claims about original meaning made by others. Finally, the Article includes an Appendix describing nine English language dictionaries and four legal dictionaries from the Founding Era that the Supreme Court has cited in constitutional cases, and indicates …

A Concise Guide To Using Dictionaries From The Founding Era To Determine The Original Meaning Of The Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article explains how dictionaries published in the Founding Era may provide evidence of the original meaning of the Constitution. In addition, the Article identifies and discusses six potential problems with relying on definitions from these dictionaries, and cautions that these potential problems must be considered when using Founding Era dictionaries either to make claims about the Constitution’s original meaning or to evaluate claims about original meaning made by others. Finally, the Article includes an Appendix describing nine English language dictionaries and four legal dictionaries from the Founding Era that the Supreme Court has cited in constitutional cases, and indicates …

Justice Kennedy’S Use Of Sources Of The Original Meaning Of The Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The essay concerns one aspect of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, namely, his use of some of the principal sources of the original meaning of the Constitution in his written opinions. By the term “sources of the original meaning of the Constitution,” I refer to the records from the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, the records of the state ratifying conventions, the Federalist Papers, dictionaries showing usage of language during the Founding period, and the acts of the First Congress. The goals of this essay are first to identify, quote, and describe passages in which Justice Kennedy has cited these sources, and …

A Concise Guide To The Records Of The Federal Constitutional Convention Of 1787 As A Source Of The Original Meaning Of The U.S. Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The article describes the Constitutional Convention and the various kinds of records that were kept of its proceedings. The essay then explains, with examples, how judicial opinions and academic works draw upon the records for evidence of the Constitution’s original meaning, including both the meaning that the Framers may have subjectively intended the document to have and also other possible meanings. The essay next identifies and assesses seven important potential grounds for impeaching assertions about what the records show. Each of these potential grounds has merit in some contexts, but all of them are also subject to significant limitations or …

The Sacrifice Of The New Originalism, Thomas Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article argues that Originalism has achieved its intellectual respectability only at the necessary expense of its ballyhooed promise of constraint. The Article recounts the theoretical advances of the New Originalism and argues that the New Originalism is substantially more defensible than was the Old one and is much better positioned to answer the scholarly critiques that demolished its predecessor. The Article further explains that these benefits have, however, come at the cost of judicial constraint. By its very nature - and to a far greater degree than its proponents have tended to recognize - the New Originalism is a …

Biblical Literalism And Constitutional Originalism, Peter J. Smith, Robert W. Tuttle

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Critics of constitutional originalism have often described originalists as “fundamentalists” or “literalists” as a way of discrediting originalism. This comparison has obvious rhetorical force because it tends implicitly to taint originalism with guilt by association, given views in the academy of Protestant fundamentalism. But originalism’s critics are not the only ones who appear to have noticed the similarities between the two interpretive approaches; when they have entered the arena of policy and judicial politics, proponents of biblical literalism have generally embraced originalism as the correct approach to constitutional interpretation.

It is not surprising that both critics of constitutional originalism and …

How Different Are Originalism And Non-Originalism?, Peter J. Smith

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The academic debate about originalism remains vibrant and dynamic, and the theoretical case for originalism is more nuanced now than ever before. So nuanced, in fact, that - at least as described by several prominent originalists - originalism is no longer very different, either in theory or in application, from non-originalism. These self-described “new originalists” have begun to contend that the objective original meaning of many of the Constitution’s provisions - including the broad rights-granting provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment - should be ascertained at a very high level of generality. They have also urged recognition of a distinction between …

Comparative Originalism, David Fontana

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Jamal Greene has written an important paper examining originalism in other countries. This short response argues that comparing the United States with Canada and Australia (the countries Professor Greene mostly examines) involves comparing quite different countries, because the Canadian and Australian constitutions reorganized preexisting institutions, whereas the United States had more of a nation-creating, revolutionary constitution. Other countries that arose out of more revolutionary events, such as certain post-colonial African and Latin American nations, have also tended to feature originalist arguments. When the nation predates the creation of a constitution, key cultural and political understandings also predate the constitution, thereby …

Which Original Meaning Of The Constitution Matters To Justice Thomas?, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay was published as part of a symposium hosted by the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty in March 2009. The journal citation is: Gregory E. Maggs, Which Original Meaning Matters to Justice Thomas?, 4 N.Y.U. J. L. & Liberty 494 (2009).

The essay addresses a basic question about Justice Clarence Thomas’s originalist jurisprudence. When Justice Thomas looks for the original meaning of the Constitution, does he seek (a) the meaning intended by the Framers at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (“original intent”), (b) the meaning as understood by the delegates to the thirteen state ratifying conventions …

A Concise Guide To The Records Of The State Ratifying Conventions As A Source Of The Original Meaning Of The U.S. Constitution, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article was published by the University of Illinois Law Review in 2009. The citation is: Gregory E. Maggs, A Concise Guide to the Records of the State Ratifying Conventions as a Source of the Original Meaning of the U.S. Constitution, 2009 U. Ill. L. Rev. 457.

Starting in the fall of 1787, legislatures in the original thirteen states called for conventions for the purpose of deciding whether to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Many of the records of these state ratifying conventions have survived. The records reveal some of what the delegates at the state conventions said during their debates …

Which Original Meaning Of The Constitution Matters To Justice Thomas?, Gregory E. Maggs

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay was published as part of a symposium hosted by the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty in March 2009. The journal citation is: Gregory E. Maggs, Which Original Meaning Matters to Justice Thomas?, 4 N.Y.U. J. L. & Liberty 494 (2009).

The essay addresses a basic question about Justice Clarence Thomas’s originalist jurisprudence. When Justice Thomas looks for the original meaning of the Constitution, does he seek (a) the meaning intended by the Framers at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (“original intent”), (b) the meaning as understood by the delegates to the thirteen state ratifying conventions …

Living Originalism, Peter J. Smith, Thomas Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Originalists routinely argue that originalism is the only coherent and legitimate theory of constitutional interpretation. This Article endeavors to undermine those claims by demonstrating that, despite the suggestion of originalist rhetoric, originalism is not a single, coherent, unified theory of constitutional interpretation, but is rather a disparate collection of distinct constitutional theories that share little more than a misleading reliance on a common label. Originalists generally agree only on certain very broad precepts that serve as the fundamental underlying principles of constitutional interpretation: specifically, that the “writtenness” of the Constitution necessitates a fixed constitutional meaning, and that courts that see …

The Federal Marriage Amendment And The False Promise Of Originalism, Thomas Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article approaches the originalism debate from a new angle - through the lens of the recently defeated Federal Marriage Amendment. There was profound and very public disagreement about the meaning of the FMA - in particular about the effect that it would have had on civil unions. The inescapable conclusion is that there was no original public meaning of the FMA with respect to the civil unions question. This suggests that often the problem with originalism is not just that the original public meaning of centuries-old provisions of the Constitution is hard to find (especially by judges untrained in …

Revitalizing The Forgotten Uniformity Constraint On The Commerce Power, Thomas Colby

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Employing a straightforward textual reading of the Commerce Clause, which, unlike various other constitutional clauses, does not expressly mandate uniform regulation, the Supreme Court has recently declared that Congress is free to enact commercial regulations that apply in some states, but not in others, or that explicitly treat some states differently than others. This Article seeks to call that conclusion into question, and in the course of doing so, to explore the proper roles of history and text in constitutional decisionmaking.

From a historical perspective, the desire for uniformity was both the precipitating factor in the creation of the federal …

Sources Of Federalism: An Empirical Analysis Of The Court's Quest For Original Meaning, Peter J. Smith

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Although a debate continues to rage in the academy and on the Court about the propriety of originalism as a methodology of constitutional interpretation, in federalism cases both the majority and the dissent on the current Court appear to have embraced the approach. Yet their agreement ends there; the Court has consistently divided 5-4 in federalism cases. What explains the disagreement among Justices who appear to agree that the original understanding of the Constitution is also its current meaning? This article presents the results of a study of citation patterns in federalism cases since 1970. The study demonstrates that the …