Supreme Court Term: Conservative Originalism Is Fading Away - Bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Chief Justice Roberts, a self-described originalist, may be quietly dismantling the very doctrine he championed — and the Court's own rulings are the evidence.
OriginalismLiving ConstitutionalismJudicial RestraintPrincipal-Agent Problem
Theory Briefing
- Bloomberg argues the Roberts Court is bending originalist reasoning so far it no longer resembles the doctrine it claims to follow.
- Trump v. Cook is cited as a case where Roberts, the supposed originalist standard-bearer, reached a result hard to square with founding-era text or history.
- The tension exposes a core debate: whether originalism is a genuine constraint on judges or a flexible label that justifies preferred outcomes.
- When a doctrine's defenders must stretch it to survive, the question becomes whether the doctrine is guiding decisions or decorating them.