Supreme Court Justices Thomas, Alito and other conservative justices refer to themselves as Originalists, basing their decisions on the original intent of the founders.
The founders, the fifty-five white, male elites, some slave holders, others businessmen, some expressed their opposition to slavery, none were abolitionists. While Madison viewed slavery as repugnant he never freed his 100 slaves, he sold slaves, and found slaves necessary for him to continue his plantation lifestyle
The founders never mentioned women, it took 133 years before the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.
The founders also feared the masses, members of the Senate were to be selected by state legislatures. While individual states moved to electing Senators it wasn’t until 1913 that the 17th amendment changed the Constitution.
The founders never mentioned slaves, the “3/5 compromise ,” Madison’s fillip to win over slaveholding states in determining allocation of seats in the House refers to slaves as “3/5 of all other persons,” the so-called compromise gave slave holding states a majority in the House.
The question of selecting a national leader was the last unresolved issue, many of the founders, as I have mentioned, feared the masses, and a result we have been burdened with the Electoral College, a system placing a layer between the voters and the selection of a president, it was only in 2022 that a law made the counting of the electoral votes pro forma.
To further muddy the views of the founders the Constitutional Convention was a secret meeting, shades were drawn, there is no transcript, we only have Madison’s notes. Madison continued to edit the notes from 1787 until his death in 1836 and in his will required his notes not be released until fifty years after his death. A historian, Max Ferrand, using the notes, published the Annals of the Constitution in 1914.
In 2017 Mary Bilder, a professor at Boston College closely examined Madison’s original notes (Madison’s Hand, Harvard University Press) and found numerous edits, changes, additions, subtractions, casting substantial doubt on the accuracy of the Ferrand Annals.
- [A] superb study of the Constitutional Convention as selectively reflected in Madison’s voluminous notes on it…Scholars have been aware that Madison made revisions in the Notes but have not intensively explored them. Bilder has looked closely indeed at the Notes and at his revisions, and the result is this lucid, subtle book. It will be impossible to view Madison’s role at the convention and read his Notes in the same uncomplicated way again…An accessible and brilliant rethinking of a crucial moment in American history.—Robert K. Landers, Wall Street Journal
Will the Originalists rethink their decisions? Of course not, they fear the masses, bow to the elites, as did their predecessors in Philadelphia during the fateful summer of 1787.
BTW, do the SCOTUS members include the authors of the 13/14/15th amendments as founders? I think not.
Some of the most impactful decisions of the Supreme Court are not only based on views of the white, male misogynistic, racists of 1787, they’re based on the misogynistic racist views of today
Ed in the Apple: Blogging on the Intersection of Education and Politics Title 