Garrett Snedeker’s thoughtful review of my book, The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory: Why We Need the Framers, concludes by requesting a follow-up essay. In particular, he asks how my call to bring the Framers’ intentions back into the core of constitutional interpretation relates to what Snedeker, Hadley Arkes, and their James Wilson Institute colleagues […]
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The Art of Biography: Wisdom from the Hamilton Musical
With the long-awaited return of Broadway, audiences are once again gazing in awe at its crown jewel: Hamilton. The blockbuster musical introduced to the world, as no biography ever had, the unlikely story of the Caribbean orphan-turned-American founder. Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda takes all the artistic liberties one would expect in a theatrical rendering of the […]
Originalism: A Hollow Core?
Book Review: Drakeman, Donald, “The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory” (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Don Drakeman’s “The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory” arrives at a time when Originalism faces three interrelated questions. First, does the success of the originalist project hinge on a devotion to interpreting the text of the Constitution according to its original […]
What Does It Mean to Interpret the Constitution?
For virtually all of Western legal history, when judges interpreted legal texts, their goal was to identify the intent of the lawmaker. For the past 50 years, however, constitutional theorists have shifted their focus away from the Framers and have instead emphasized either the original public meaning or a host of living, common sense, consequentialist, […]
Bringing Science to Politics: The Political Philosophy of John Adams
The last thirty years have seen a resurgence of interest in John Adams. From the acclaimed biographies of David McCullough and Joseph Ellis to the works of C. Bradley Thompson, John Paynter, Jonathan Green, Luke Mayville, Sara Georgini, and Ben Peterson focusing on specific aspects of Adams’s political thought and writings, the “Sage of Braintree” […]
