The Supreme Court’s Originalists Are Fundamentally Wrong About History

In early July 1985, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese launched a legal revolution from the tony confines of the Sheraton Washington Hotel. Speaking to the American Bar Association, he argued that “far too many” Supreme Court decisions had devolved into mere “policy choices,” driven by the justices’ personal preferences, rather than following “constitutional principle.” In a fiery line that Meese skipped when he read the speech but that appeared prominently in the published version, he said the...