Aaron Coleman

Jan 16, 2025 | lawliberty.org | Aaron Coleman |John O. McGinnis |Mike Rappaport |David Schaefer

Stanford historian Jonathan Gienapp’s new book, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique, is an important shot across the bow of a venerable legal tradition. Using the tools of a historian, Gienapp aims to draw the methods of public meaning originalism into question. In this symposium, Law & Liberty contributors offer responses from both legal and historical perspectives.

Jan 16, 2025 | lawliberty.org | Jonathan Gienapp |Aaron Coleman |David Schaefer |Emina Melonic

Jonathan Gienapp’s Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique does not come to praise originalism but to bury it. Far from a polemic or a screed, however, Gienapp has produced a profoundly considerate, sustained, and critical attack upon the methodology of public meaning originalism. The result is arguably the most important book written against originalist methodology. Originalists in the academy have little choice but to pay attention to it and respond to its charges.

Jul 15, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Alison L. LaCroix |Aaron Coleman |David Goldman |Isaac Willour

Alison LaCroix’s new book, The Interbellum Constitution, challenges how we understand American constitutional history between 1815 and 1860. Most historians interpret the period as a power struggle between federal and state power. LaCroix, on the other hand, discerns in the era a multifaceted system of “federalisms” in which federal, state, and local governments engaged in two persistent debates. The first revolved around defining and determining the meaning of the Constitution.

May 6, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Jack Balkin |Aaron Coleman |Adam White |Theodore Dalrymple

Jack M. Balkin’s Memory and Authority deserves praise for advocating that a natural relationship exists between history and constitutional interpretation. He is right to point out that both should rely upon one another more than they do; it is a shame that each group looks sideways at the other. Much of this suspicion emerged with the rise of professional history a century ago, with its disciplinary focus on context, causality, and change over time.

Jan 18, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Christian Fritz |Aaron Coleman |John O. McGinnis |James Patterson

Modern American constitutionalism, with its emphasis on executive power and judicial supremacy, obfuscates constitutional history. Because we have lost so much of that constitutional past, any explanation of a tradition that departs from contemporary norms now requires an act of historical recovery, of venturing into a different world with mentalities and beliefs far removed from today. Christian G.