fbpx

A Republic, If We Can Find It

The overturn of Roe could be a key pivot point back to the ordered, republican decision-making the Constitution demands, encouraging a return to legislative politics that demands calm reflection, moral seriousness, negotiation and compromise, and living with principled disagreement.
Common-good originalism’s historical understanding of the Constitution’s adoption is perhaps its weakest link. The Constitution emerged from a negotiated consensus of a complex popular sovereign—a fact that ought to reinforce a judge’s commitment to the written text.