An Upside-Down Case That Originalism Killed Constitutional Amendments

Harvard law and history professor Jill Lepore’s cover story in The Atlantic promises to tell us “How Originalism Killed the Constitution: A radical legal philosophy has undermined the process of constitutional evolution.” It’s an excerpt from Lepore’s new book, and it argues that originalism was the reason that Americans no longer amend their federal Constitution.

It should not surprise readers of the anti-originalist genre that Lepore’s case is not only unpersuasive but has the cause-and-effect chain completely backward. Indeed, in places she acknowledges as much. Her account is also riddled with some hilarious misreadings of constitutional history.