3 ms·

I'm always a fan of scotusblog coverage. https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/justices-side-with-high-school-football-coach-who-prayed-on-the-field-with-students

I'm always a fan of scotusblog coverage. https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/justices-side-with-high-school-football-coach-who-prayed-on-the-field-with-students/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/justices-side-with-high-s... My personal opinion, if it matters is that Gorsuch argues that we need to assess religious exercise and the establishment clause based on what the founders knew and thought, and he misconstrued (as shown in the pictures in the dissent) the facts of the case to achieve his preferred outcome. But even if he hadn't, there's a danger to Originalism, in that people in the past didn't have the information we have now. The founders probably weren't nearly as aware of how children are uniquely vulnerable to coercion and influence by authority figures, for example. Thomas Jefferson wrote (and this quote was inscribed on his memorial), "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

kryogen1c 4y ago
> there's a danger to Originalism, in that people in the past didn't have the information Good thing they built in a mechanism for revision then. Their intent is relatively clear. If you don't like the rule, change the rule. Anything else is vigilantism.
- WesternWind 4y ago
  It's bold to suggest their intent is relatively clear when the Court is literally reversing it's past standard in this case and many others this term.
dragonwriter 4y ago
If we are going to quote Jefferson, he cuts more to the point in a famous letter to Madison: On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. (Note that the 19 years is based on analysis of lifespans, etc., at the time, and is basically a model of generational turnover, so the same logic would get a slightly longer time today.) https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/thomas-jefferson-james-madison https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/tho... So, at least as far Jefferson goes, the framers intent would appear to be (to borrow from Lin Manuel Miranda): “Uh, do whatever you want, we’re super dead.” Of course, the cult that deifies an artificially constructed image of “the Founders” to justify their ideology wouldn't approve of that at all.

kryogen1c 4y ago

> there's a danger to Originalism, in that people in the past didn't have the information Good thing they built in a mechanism for revision then. Their intent is relatively clear. If you don't like the rule, change the rule. Anything else is vigilantism.

WesternWind 4y ago
It's bold to suggest their intent is relatively clear when the Court is literally reversing it's past standard in this case and many others this term.

dragonwriter 4y ago

If we are going to quote Jefferson, he cuts more to the point in a famous letter to Madison: On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. (Note that the 19 years is based on analysis of lifespans, etc., at the time, and is basically a model of generational turnover, so the same logic would get a slightly longer time today.) https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/thomas-jefferson-james-madison https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/tho... So, at least as far Jefferson goes, the framers intent would appear to be (to borrow from Lin Manuel Miranda): “Uh, do whatever you want, we’re super dead.” Of course, the cult that deifies an artificially constructed image of “the Founders” to justify their ideology wouldn't approve of that at all.