Jill Lepore

I can respect it but be unpersuaded by it as a way of interpreting the Constitution.

But I will never concede that it is anything to do with how history works as a form of humanistic inquiry.

Yeah.

There are some moments that really blew my mind in trying to trace that.

Because in a way, the book is a history of originalism.

It's a history of amendments, but it's also a genealogy of originalist thought.

There's a moment in the oral arguments at Brown v. Board in 1953 or 54, it was argued twice, where this guy, arguing for keeping schools segregated...

Quotes at length, Tawny's decision in Dred Scott about how the framers really, we need to always be deferring to the original intent of the framers and they could never possibly imagine that blacks could be citizens.

Like, it's surprising that, like, because Dred Scott is, we could call it an originalist opinion, right?

It's like, that's what the research that Tani, the Chief Justice Roger Tani did.

is to prove that the framers would never have intended for blacks to be citizens based on his reading of history.

And that's the originalist argument of Brown v. Boynton.

We declare like modern originalists are not like defending, you know, the segregation.

It's not the project of originalism.

But that is an original, like, oh, the framers of the 14th Amendment never intended, they would never have imagined that black and white children would go to school together.

That's not what they were doing in the 14th Amendment.

And there's that, you know, when Chief Justice Earl Warren issues his opinion in Brown v. Board, he says...

the history is inconclusive.

Which is his thing.

And the history is murky, but his thing is just a way to say the history doesn't matter.