For or Against Constitutional Originalism?: A Debate 

“Constitutional originalism“ it seems as if assigning such a moniker, makes being loyal to the Constitution, a pejorative . Also, it tends to lead one to think the constitution is up for debate . I suppose all things are temporary 🤷🏼‍♂️ who knows. It’s not like a day goes by, where the constitution isn’t “un’d!”

One problem with "originalism" is when they say "the Founders meant x", well the Founders didn´t have the same views on everything at all, a lot of the wording of the constitution was chosen after having gone through comittees as a compromise and probably a lot of the people who voted to ratify the constitution and the bill of rights ammendments understood what they were voting on slightly differently from each other. When it comes to the second ammendment, for example, more permissive versions were voted down. It´s actually remarkably unspecific in terms of what it guarantees and probably meant "the Federal government can´t abolish state militia". Some states had individual guarantees in their constitutions, some didn´t, and initially the ammendment only applied to the federal government. I don´t see how you can claim there was any one view of what it meant at the time. Another problem is that at times, new facts emerge. The constitution bans cruel and unusual punishments, and certainly the founders wouldn´t have objected to things like caning people for minor offences, or executing juveniles. However, the law has always allowed new evidence to be admitted, and much more has been learned since their time. Indeed, we know much more about human psychology and we know that teenage reasoning capacity isn´t fully developed. We also know that corporal punishments don´t really work and cause psychological trauma. To not take this into account is utterly absurd, it would be like arguing that "freedom of the press" only includes printed materials. Finally, the constitution does need a major update, unfortunately we have too much political disagreement for that to happen.

In my opinion, I believe both the "living" and "originalism" schools of thought each have their own respective strength and weaknesses. I don't think it is helpful to have court Judges bound themselves dogmatically to any fixed singular philosophy. For example, if the Supreme court Justices in the 1850-1860s had "progressed" in their judicial philosophy and took a more liberal view on the question of slavery; such as taking a step forward to depart from the (ideological) "intended view" of the Framers and properly recognize black folks as HUMAN BEING instead of "property" under the law, the Civil War might have been averted. On the other hand, the "living" constitution philosophy is susceptible to be exploited to stretch the meaning of the constitutional text too far and distort the structure to an unrecognizable shape. This risk is indeed real esp. in this era where the far-left progressives seem to rely a lot on postmodernism thoughts as authority. Therefore, I still believe that good old Common sense should and must eventually prevail, to interpret the meaning of certain key operating words within the context of the contemporary society and social norms.

Not sure why we think we should leave the meaning of today's meaning of the Constitution to unelected judges. The Constitution means what it meant when it was written. Legislatures are free to fill in the blanks and/or revision/update it.

Im for Orgionalism, that being the consituion prior to civil war, 15% flat income tax. change for federal.