Originalism and Constitutional Amendment

Abstract

This Article examines a problem that constitutional amendment uniquely poses for originalism, namely: how should changes to a constitution’s text that enact a new set of understandings be reconciled with the understandings of the constitution’s framers? This issue poses a significant challenge for originalism, and yet it has been overlooked by scholarship to date. This Article is a first effort to tackle this issue. It develops an originalist approach to amendment that identifies which amendments pose the problem and that provides a method for addressing it. In developing this approach, the Article’s analysis makes two significant contributions to the evaluation and understanding of original..