The Fact That "Originalists" Are Now Embarrassed by the Phrase "Original Intent" Doesn't Mean the Rest of Us Have to Pretend
Over at Balkinizing, Jason Mazzone screams and leaps at Jeff Toobin:
Balkinization: The Two Toobins: Toobin's opinion columns about the Court for The New Yorker are routinely weak… advocacy dressed up as analysis… succeeding as neither… [a] howler from Toobin's column on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:
Some Justices like to assert, or pretend, that the Constitution has a single meaning, and that each case thus has only one correct resolution. This view is especially pronounced among conservatives, who, in recent years, have claimed that they can identify the original intent of the framers and use their eighteenth-century wisdom to resolve any modern controversy.
Perhaps some dumbing down is needed for readers of The New Yorker but surely it isn't hard to describe originalism accurately… [as] original public meaning not intent…. [What does his] authoring poor columns in a national magazine… this tell us about the reliability of old media (books!) versus new?
Google search for "original intent": 2,350,000 results
Google search for "original public meaning": 102,000 results