The six Federalist Society-vetted members of the Supreme Court claim to be close readers of the Constitution, “originalists,” who parse the intentions of the founders and, somehow, even the attitude of the public, whenever a law was created. The latter approach is their fairly new “history and traditions” gambit.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brent Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, want to keep the country locked into 1789 or 1868 or whenever the original law was passed — unless, of course, they want to change its meaning and morph the Constitution for their own political purposes. Emily Bazelon wrote an illuminating essay on how the Court’s conservative justices are increasingly utilizing the history-and-traditions standard to serve their own agendas.
