Timothy Sandefur (Goldwater Institute) has posted Originalism and the Illusions of Objectivity (NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, forthcoming) (47 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In this article, I examine Originalism’s entitlement to the status of an objective theory of law. I consider first what objectivity means in a legal context, then examine the two main claims of Originalism (semantic and normative). After seeing why neither of these satisfies the test of objectivity, I consider recent efforts by Originalist scholars to satisfy that test—efforts that reveal that their successes come about only at the cost of jettisoning Originalism’s basic reliance on origin—a move I call “stone soup”—which results in a theory that has no plausible claim to the title “Originalism.”
I think originalists would generally say, though, that the question is not whether originalism is wholly objective, but rather whether it is more objective that its competitors. (As Justice Scalia put it, whether it is the "lesser evil".)
Posted at 6:36 AM