Historians and Originalism Available to Purchase

The dominance of originalism in contemporary constitutional interpretation gives historians both an opportunity and a responsibility to explain and illustrate how our discipline would resolve questions about the original meaning, intention, and understanding of particular clauses. In response to this challenge, the Brennan Center at NYU Law School organized a Historians’ Council to mobilize how the profession can contribute to ongoing legal and political debates. Four members of the council formed a panel at the January 2025 annual meeting of the American Historical Association to discuss our approaches to the subject and to forecast the agenda going forward.