What is "originalism"

n. The view that a text should be interpreted according to the intent of its original authors.

n. the belief that the United States Constitution should be interpreted in the way the authors originally intended it

In the context of United States constitutional interpretation, originalism is a principle of interpretation that views the Constitution's meaning as fixed as of the time of enactment. The originalist enterprise, then, is a quest to determine the meaning of the utterances, the meaning of which can only be changed by the procedures set out in Article Five of the Constitution. The term originated in the 1980s. However, the concept is an application of formalist theory and closely related to textualism when it is applied to meaning.

Today, originalism is popular among some political conservatives in the U.S., and is most prominently associated with Justice Clarence Thomas, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and the late Robert Bork. However, some liberals, such as Justice Hugo Black and Akhil Amar, have also subscribed to the theory.

Originalism is an umbrella term for interpretative methods that hold to the "fixation thesis"—the notion that an utterance's semantic content is fixed at the time it is uttered. Originalists seek one of two alternative sources of meaning:

• The original intent theory, which holds that interpretation of a written constitution is (or should be) consistent with what was meant by those who drafted and ratified it. This is currently a minority view among originalists.
• The original meaning theory, which is closely related to textualism, is the view that interpretation of a written constitution or law should be based on what reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have understood the ordinary meaning of the text to be. It is this view with which most originalists, such as Justice Scalia, are associated.

These theories share the view that there is an identifiable original intent or original meaning, contemporaneous with a constitution's or statute's ratification, which should govern its subsequent interpretation. The divisions between these theories relate to what exactly that identifiable original intent or original meaning is: the intentions of the authors or the ratifiers, the original meaning of the text, a combination of the two, or the original meaning of the text but not its expected application.