Thursday, March 5, 2026

The YJLH Symposium on Gienapp's "Against Constitutional Originalism"

We have previously noted some contributions to the symposium on Jonathan Gienapp’s Against Constitutional Originalism in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities.  The complete symposium is now available open-access online:

Can Originalism Survive Jonathan Gienapp?
Thomas B. Colby

Gienapp’s Big Book: Conceptual Rupture, Modernism, and the End of Originalism
Logan Sawyer

Birthright Citizenship, Unwritten Constitutionalism, and the Nature of the Union
John Mikhail

Against Against Constitutional Originalism: A Critique of a Critique
Mark Peterson

Essential Fidelities
Lawrence Lessig 

The Free Constitution: The Real Genius of the Constitution
Mary Sarah Bilder

The Obsolescence of the Originalism Battles
John Witt

History or Memory?: Claims on the Past in Constitutional Argument Over Originalism, Civil War/Reconstruction, and MAGA
Reva B. Siegel

In the Beginning There Was Positive Law: Section 25, Calder v. Bull, and Constitutional Continuity
Kevin C. Walsh

Historians and Originalists
Cass R. Sunstein

Yes, The Founders Were Originalists
William Baude and Stephen E. Sachs

The Constitution and Historical Rupture
Jonathan Gienapp