A sign of originalism’s strength is the annual conference on the subject now held at San Diego Law School under the direction of Mike Rappaport. It attracts prominent originalists and, as importantly, ever more critics of originalism who now take this enterprise seriously. One of those critics, Richard Primus, has blogged about the conference in a friendly manner. Nevertheless, he is not correct in his thesis that many, if not most, originalist theorists believe that originalism has never been tried before. I have never heard such a bald assertion from my colleagues.
And that proposition would be obviously wrong about the course of constitutional law. James Madison, widely regarded as the father of the Constitution, supported what is now called originalism:
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified in the nation. In that sense alone, it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that not be the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable exercise of its power.
A historian of constitutional law who is not himself originalist concurs that until the Progressive Era, nearly everyone appealed to originalist reasoning even if they at times disagreed to its outcome.
