Abstract
This Article challenges the conventional understanding of originalism as a method that promotes unchanging constitutional meanings. Drawing on four and a half decades of experience since Attorney General Edwin Meese first championed originalism as a conservative project, this Article demonstrates that originalism has generally proven destabilizing rather than stabilizing to constitutional law. Landmark cases such as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, and Shelby County v. Holder show that the Supreme Court frequently deploys originalism when it seeks to upend settled constitutional doctrine, contradicting claims that originalism promotes constraint and predictability. This Article surveys the proliferation of originalism “brands,” documenting at least thirty different labels, and suggests that this theoretical fragmentation reflects what intellectual historian Thomas Kuhn describes as the late stages preceding “paradigm” collapse in intellectual disciplines. As originalist theory becomes increasingly complex and internally conflicted, it fails to provide the methodological coherence its proponents claim. Some now argue for traditionalism as a modified paradigm that may better describe the Court’s actual interpretive practice. Rather than abandoning originalism and traditionalism, this Article advocates for using “modest” and “pluralist” originalism, supplemented with living traditionalism. This approach can help provide accessible explanations for judicial decisions, offer some interpretive guardrails, and, in an important but thus far overlooked virtue, serve as a tool for recovering forgotten constitutional meanings that merit reconsideration. This Article introduces the concept of
“inspirational originalism,” meaning historical inquiry to revive neglected constitutional principles that may offer value in contemporary debates. Ultimately, this Article reframes originalism’s primary function as disruption. When constitutional precedent has strayed from founding principles or when settled doctrine ignores historically grounded values, originalism and traditionalism can serve as tools for constitutional change. This disruptive potential requires judgment about which traditions deserve preservation and which merit abandonment—judgments that originalism alone cannot provide. This Article concludes that originalism’s future lies in its use as one interpretive tool among others in the ongoing project of constitutional reconstruction.
Repository Citation
Susan D. Carle,
Originalism as Disruption,
77
Fla. L. Rev.
1
(2026).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_lawrev/2333