Re: John Bingham & the Story of American Liberty

[Michael Zimmer]

To follow this thread, the focus of so much inquiry on the intent of the
original Framers obscures the fact that whatever their understanding was of
the original document, the document today is textually much different.  So
originalist thinking helps block thinking about what the text today means.
I think the discussion of so-called 11th amendment state sovereignty today,
for example, fails to take into the tectonic shift in viewpoint about the
states' roles and value as protectors of individual rights started with the
Civil War amendments and continued with womens' suffrage, etc.