The loudest fights about the Supreme Court are usually about outcomes. We pull back the curtain on the methods that shape those outcomes—text, history, precedent, and values—and explain how different approaches to constitutional interpretation drive very different answers to the same question.

We start with textualism as the shared baseline: everyone claims fidelity to the words. From there, we dive into originalism’s focus on public meaning at the time of adoption, walking through the evidence historians and lawyers actually use—ratification debates, period dictionaries, and legal practice. That’s where examples like “domestic violence” and the word among in the Commerce Clause reveal how small linguistic shifts can have big constitutional stakes. We also tackle the internal tension among originalists over when to honor long-settled precedent that conflicts with historical meaning.

Then we turn to doctrinalism and living constitutionalism. Doctrinalism prizes stability, treating precedent as the main guide for today’s disputes. Living constitutionalism ranges from doctrine-first approaches to value-forward readings that elevate principles like liberty, equality, dignity, and privacy. We lay out the tradeoffs without the caricatures: originalism risks rigidity but secures democratic legitimacy through Article V, while living approaches offer adaptability at the cost of giving judges more room to craft policy under the banner of principle.

We also retire the stale activism versus restraint cliché. Counting how often the Court strikes laws tells us little about whether it follows the right sources in the right order. And yes, we unpack the headline-ready “the Constitution is dead” line often pinned to Justice Scalia, placing it in context as a critique of free-form updating rather than a dismissal of the text. If you want to understand why today’s opinions read like history seminars—and why that’s healthy for public debate—this conversation is your guide. Subscribe, share, and tell us: which method should lead when text, history, and precedent collide?

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