Sandefur and Barnett on Liberal Originalism

While I'm on the subject of originalism and constitutional interpretation, I really should link to Timothy Sandefur's brilliant article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy entitled Liberal Originalism: A Past for The Future and to Randy Barnett's equally brilliant article, An Originalism for Non-Originalists. Both articles help flesh out the idea of liberal originalism, an originalism based upon the application of the founding principles found in the Declaration rather than on the letter of the law at the time of the founding.

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I for one will take a look. :)

By Eric the .5b (not verified) on 30 Jan 2006 #permalink

I sometimes think we do ourselves a disservice when we restrict the "founding" principles to the textual efforts of Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, et al. We do owe the French a bit of praise as well, particularly Molière, Voltaire, and Rousseau, when we examine the "original." Just a thought!

Eric-

I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter. You might be interested in Positive Liberty, a group blog that I write for. All four contributors are advocates of liberal originalism (liberal in the classical sense, not the modern political sense). Tim Sandefur, whose article I link to above, is one of the contributors there. In addition to him and Randy Barnett, you might want to check out Scott Alan Gerber's work in this regard.

I'd actually recently started following Positive Liberty, as it happens.

By Eric the .5b (not verified) on 30 Jan 2006 #permalink