Transcript

Originalism is often criticized because it requires judges to do history and judges, well, aren't historians, so who's to say that they would be particularly good at doing history. But this is not a particularly persuasive argument against originalism, because the law often requires judges to dabble in other disciplines. Tort Law and antitrust law requires judges sometimes to do economics, but they aren't economists. Interpreting language requires judges to do some linguistic analysis, but judges aren't linguists. In other words, the law sometimes requires that these different disciplines come to bear on particular legal questions and when those disciplines are necessary, or come to bear is a legal question that only the law itself can answer.

Related Content