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Recent decisions on abortion, guns and school prayer made by the Supreme Court prove that the Founding Fathers deserve less reverence in our society, one historian proposed in the Boston Globe.
Although "brilliant," author Tom Chaffin claimed that by capitalizing the term "Founding Fathers," we were "deifying" them and "playing into the dubious claims of the ‘originalist’ legal movement," which guided recent controversial court rulings.
"Now that the US Supreme Court’s majority, with its growing train of overreaching decisions, seems hell-bent on destroying that institution’s remaining legitimacy, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the editorial practice of capitalizing the noun ‘Founders’ in articles discussing the Constitution. That practice, a typographical deification of James Madison & Co., only abets the court’s so-called originalists," he wrote in the opinion column.
This undated engraving shows the scene on July 4, 1776 when the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Philip Livingston and Roger Sherman, was approved by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The words "all men are created equal" are invoked often but are difficult to define. ((AP Photo))
The columnist slammed the court's recent decisions on "gun control, public prayer, abortion, and environmental regulations" for "boldly defying" public opinion. He blamed the conservative majority's "hubris" on their devotion to the Originalism doctrine.
He argued that by, trying to determine the "intentions or expressed views of that document’s authors," the justices were purporting to know "exactly what was in the head of a long-deceased individual," which he deemed, a "fool's errand."
Chaffin went on to question if certain parts of the Constitution, like the Second Amendment, were even relevant today.
"Put aside for now the questionable assertion that court decisions should prioritize history — and a document created in the late 18th century — over the realities of modern life. Never mind, for instance, that muskets in the Founders’ era were scarcely distributed among the nation’s small general population. Moreover, those crude firearms took time to load and could fire but one musket ball at a time. And as for abortion, put aside as well the fact that the Constitution contains not a single mention of that procedure — nor, for that matter, women."
The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
"Even on its own terms, the originalist quest of today’s Supreme Court jurists is a fool’s errand. How are we to expect today’s jurists and their small staffs to know precisely what the Founders thought in their own time, let alone what they would have made of ours?" he asked.
A number of media outlets and journalists have disputed the legitimacy of both the Supreme Court and Constitutional Originalism, since the court's June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling.
The New York Times' Ezra Klein openly questioned the court's legitimacy in a recent opinion column. He argued that the "anti-democratic" Supreme Court made a "mockery of the public will," with their rulings that upset progressives.
Signing of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. (Library of Congress)
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A Georgetown law professor and MSNBC guest attacked the Constitution, blaming a recent shooting on Americans being "slaves to an ancient document."
During a MSNBC podcast, a Columbia law professor told host Chris Hayes that constitutional originalism was "just bogus," and the Founding Fathers "don't represent us in any meaningful way."
Some left-wing figures frequently seen on cable news have a habit of bashing the Founding Fathers by calling them "racist" and calling the Constitution, "trash."