Jonathan Gienapp of Stanford University and Stephen Sachs of Harvard Law School join Chief Scholar Thomas Donnelly to discuss Gienapp’s new book, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique. They review the history of originalism and debate the role of originalism in constitutional interpretation today. This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series on October 8, 2024.
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This episode was produced by Tanaya Tauber, Lana Ulrich, Samson Mostashari, and Bill Pollock. It was engineered by David Stotz and Bill Pollock. Research was provided by Samson Mostashari, Cooper Smith, Gyuha Lee, and Yara Daraiseh.
Participants
Jonathan Gienapp is associate professor of history and law at Stanford University. He has published widely on the Constitution in American life and is the author of the prizewinning The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era. His second book is Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique. He is a member of the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice and has contributed to a number of historians' amicus briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States..
Stephen Sachs is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He previously taught at Duke University School of Law and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering academia, he practiced in the Washington, D.C., litigation group of Mayer Brown LLP, and he clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Thomas Donnelly is Chief Content Officer at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- Jonathan Gienapp, “Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique” (2024)
- Stephen Sachs and Will Baude, “Originalism and the Law of the Past” (Law and History Review, 2019)
- Michael Stokes Paulsen and Vasen Kesavan, “Is West Virginia Unconstitutional?” (90 Cal L. Rev. 291, 2002)
- William Baude, Jud Campbell, and Stephen Sachs, “General Law and the Fourteenth Amendment” (76 Stanford L. Rev 1185, 2024)
- Jud Campbell, “Four Views of the Nature of the Union” (47 Harvard J. Law & Public Policy 2, 2024)
- Fletcher v. Peck (1810)
- District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
- United States v. Rahimi (2024)
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