Thursday, March 22, 2012

How Not to Criticize Originalism

Saul Cornell's posts on Originalism during his guest stint at Faculty Lounge are so over the top that perhaps they make this point on their own.  But in case it needs to be said:  it's not effective to paint other scholars as cartoonish with posts that are themselves cartoonish.  Cornell has made important scholarly contributions in the past.  He threatens his own future readership with blogging that brings more heat than light to the question of the role of history in constitutional interpretation.  We don't like it when conservatives mischaracterize scholarship for the purpose of constructing an argument.  And we don't like it when liberals do that, too.