The Ascent of Originalism: A Conversation with Michael Rappaport

The many schools of originalism all face the same questions: does it merely perpetuate the dead hand of the past? What about the exclusion of women and blacks at the Founding? What does one do with the mountains of non-originalist precedent? This next podcast with our own Mike Rappaport, prompted by his new book that he co-authored with co-blogger John McGinnis entitled Originalism and the Good Constitution, focuses on the rise of originalism as an intrepretative methodology for Constitutional Law and attempts to answer these and other questions with a new framework called original methods originalism.

Our discussion thus focuses on the central claim of original methods which is that the enactment of the Constitution and the approval of its subsequent amendments were achieved under supermajority requirements. So we have an enduring Constitution because it has been built to satisfy more than mere majorities. As such, we discuss this important rationale for why its original meaning should be preserved.