Josh Blackman: What Do You Call an Opinion that's not Originalist?
Michael Ramsey
At Josh Blackman's Blog, Josh Blackman asks: What do you call an opinion that's not originalist (and Bryan Garner weighs in).
I say: "non-originalist" (Garner has some other ideas). I agree with Professor Blackman's rejection of "unoriginalist." We may disagree on the hyphen.
ALSO OF NOTE: Professor Blackman offers an amusing account of the Supreme Court's recent textualist opinion in Kloeckner v. Solis: Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Solicitor General's "Tortuous Reading" and "Mazelike Tour" of Civil Service Reform Act.
My addendum: the Kloeckner decision, although surely a win for textualism, shouldn't be a cause for undue textualist celebration; the equities and the text were fairly well aligned, so the Court's unanimity wasn't necessarily text-driven. Still, as Professor Blackman notes, Justice Kagan shows a lot of textualist style.
