Constitutional Originalism Quotes

Any judicial nominee who has said that the Constitution means what it says, not what judges would like it to mean, is going to be called an 'extremist.' That person will be said to be 'out of the mainstream.' But the mainstream is itself the problem.

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one.

The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.

Shortly after assuming his duties at the White House, Trump hit a home-run by selecting conservative Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court today is plagued by a vision of the Constitution which is cramped and narrow.

Unfortunately, people are re-interpreting the Constitution as a living document, and it's not. It's a solid-based document and it shouldn't be played with.

Conservatives who believe that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the plain meaning of its language and the original intent of the Framers have long been troubled by the court's decisions expanding the commerce clause to authorize Congress to regulate the most local of matters within a state's borders.

I keep hearing the argument that some things are constitutional while other things are not. The idea is that we should be in favor of all the things that were decided over 200 years ago by a bunch of slave-owning cross-dressers who pooped in holes.

We know that this man has a proven record of being a 'strict constructionist.' Our President has given us his word that he will interpret the Constitution rather than make new laws from the bench.

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead.

FDR's justices were allies while he was alive, but after he died, they developed four totally different theories of what the Constitution is, two of which are considered conservative and two of which are considered liberal.

Much of the Constitution is remarkably simple and straightforward - certainly as compared to the convoluted reasoning of judges and law professors discussing what is called 'Constitutional law,' much of which has no basis in that document....The real question [for judicial nominees] is whether that nominee will follow the law or succumb to the lure of 'a living constitution,' 'evolving standards' and other lofty words meaning judicial power to reshape the law to suit their own personal preferences.

I would appoint judges that interpreted the Constitution rather than invented it, understood the difference between being a judge and being a legislator.

Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning.

If by the statement that what the Constitution meant at the time of its adoption it means today, it is intended to say that the great clauses of the Constitution must be confined to the interpretation which the framers, with the conditions and outlook of their time would have placed upon them, the statement carries its own refutation. It was to guard against such a narrow conception that Chief Justice Marshall uttered a memorable warning— ‘We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.’

Are we to admit that the Constitution was never before rightly understood, even by those who framed it?

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]

Through the selection of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Damon Leichty, President Trump has already remade the judiciary, moving our country away from activist judges and toward individuals who will uphold the Constitution.

Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution. And that document isn't some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams.

For those of us on the front lines fighting Washington's power grabs, Judge Gorsuch's commitment to interpreting the Constitution and the laws as they are actually written is welcome news.

Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?

Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism.

Progressives and the press corps claim that judges who speak to conservative groups or attend their seminars are guilty of conflicts of interest. They even made an effort through the Judicial Conference to bar Justices from attending meetings of the Federalist Society, a legal organization that espouses constitutional originalism. But they are mute about the easy access to judges by the Climate Judiciary Project. Progressives and their friends at ProPublica and the New York Times say Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are tainted by their social connections with conservative donors and interactions with constitutional lawyers. They demand that the Justices recuse themselves from cases, despite no evident conflict of interest. But under the left’s ethics standard, every judge who attends a Climate Judiciary Project event should have to step aside from climate-related cases. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and his Senate sidecar Dick Durbin are trying to use ethics as a political weapon against conservative Justices, but watch out: It’s a double-edged sword.

A constitution is not to be made to mean one thing at one time and another some subsequent time when the circumstances may have changed…. the meaning of the Constitution is fixed when it is adopted.

Original intent is a necessary fiction that jurists have invented to get a handle on the Constitution.