The Case for Historical Originalism
Jack Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science at Stanford University. His principal areas of interest include the origins of the American Revolution and Constitution, the political theories and practices of James Madison, and the role of historical knowledge in constitutional litigation.
He is the author of four books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1997. In this work, Rakove argues that originalism, the practice of interpreting the Constitution by a fixed set of the original framers’ intentions, should not be the only approach to settling today's judicial questions.
Active supporters of "originalist" interpretations of the Constitution, like Justices Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, hold that this mode of constitutional interpretation is essentially linguistic in nature. According to Rakove, the point of being an originalist is not to explain what the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution thought they were adopting, in political terms. Rather, the idea is to produce the best understanding of what the language in question would have meant to an informed reader. In his Athenaeum lecture, Rakove will challenge that point of view, and argue that the best form of originalism is one that should take political concerns and purposes much more seriously.
A graduate of Haverford College, Rakove earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from Harvard University. He taught at Colgate University from 1975 to 1980, and was a visiting professor at NYU School of Law. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1980.
Professor Rakove’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center’s Lofgren Program in Constitutionalism.
Photo Credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service
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