Originalism and the Constitution: Does Originalism Always Provide the Answer? (Twenty-Ninth Annual Federalist Society National Student Symposium: Originalism‪)‬

An endless stream of books and articles is written, and symposia-such as this one--are held, on the ever fascinating and intriguing subject of constitutional interpretation. Obviously, it is a matter of great importance. If the Supreme Court would only adopt the correct method of constitutional interpretation, the Court would get its constitutional decisions right. Because we have arrived at a system of government in which the Court's constitutional decisions determine the most basic issues of domestic social policy for the nation as a whole, there could hardly be, it would follow, an issue of greater consequence. The dispute over methods of constitutional interpretation, however, is based almost entirely on a fiction, because Supreme Court rulings of unconstitutionality rarely, if ever, turn on an issue of interpretation. The fact is that the Constitution has very little to do with constitutional law. This was true of the Court's first ruling of unconstitutionality in Marbury v. Madison (1) in 1803, of its historically most significant, Dred Scott v. Sandford (2) in 1856, and of the perhaps most significant of its more recent, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (3) in 1992.