Originalism

[12] Law professor Raoul Berger expanded on the theory in Government by Judiciary (1977), positing that the rulings by the Warren and Burger Courts were illegitimate, as they deviated from the Constitution's original intent.

"[14] A few months after the speech, Justice William Brennan rejected Meese's view, claiming that the original intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States was indiscernible, and that text could only be understood in present terms.

[20] He also posited that historical changes between the time of adoption to the present made originalism inapplicable in areas such as free speech, freedom of religion, federalism, and gender discrimination.

[23] The debate grew more heated with the failed Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork in 1986[24] with the 1990s seeing originalism becoming a broadly endorsed view in the conservative legal movement.

[29] Edwin Meese once remarked that Black's record was evidence that "jurisprudence of original intention is not some recent conservative ideological creation".

[37] Justices Antonin Scalia, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch describe themselves as originalists in scholarly writings and public speeches.

[38][39] Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, a frequent critic of conservative originalism, argues that some aspects of the constitution were intentionally broad and vague to allow for future generations to interpret them along with the times.

[41] According to a 2021 paper in the Columbia Law Review, the Founding Fathers did not include a nondelegation doctrine in the Constitution and saw nothing wrong with delegations as a matter of legal theory, contrary to the claims of some originalists.

[42] Columbia Law School legal scholar Jamal Greene argues that originalism is remarkably unpopular outside the United States (including Canada, South Africa, India, Israel, and most of Europe), where minimalism or textualism are the recommended responses to judicial activism.

In this speech, he also stated “It is arrogant to pretend that from our vantage we can gauge accurately the intent of the framers", and that politicians that claim to do so are motivated purely by political reasons, as they “have no familiarity with the historical record."

Harvard Law School legal scholar Richard H. Fallon Jr. argues at length that the Supreme Court Justices who claim to be Originalists actually apply Originalism in a highly selective manner "which typically abets substantively conservative decisionmaking.