Will accuses me of setting up a false dichotomy by focusing on two extreme versions of originalism–originalism that requires judges to ignore precedent and originalism that licenses living constitutionalism. His response:

Originalism sometimes produces living constitutionalism, depending on how abstract a provision is, how clearly its meaning is known, and how much that meaning was intended to evolve. Originalism sometimes permits precedent, depending on how clearly a precedent can be shown to conflict with original meaning, certain forms of reliance, etc. When originalism permits precedent, the original meaning sometimes “plays a role” by helping judges figure out whether the precedent should be extended or distinguished in future cases. In each of these cases, the originalist answer can only be figured out by actually doing the work.

Well, okay, but this pretty much eliminates one of the major defenses of originalism–advanced forcefully by Scalia among others–which is that it dictates determinate case outcomes. This is crucial for Scalia because he fears that otherwise judges will allow their ideological preferences to influence interpretive outcomes.

It is ironic that in the next paragraph Will argues precisely that what is distinctive about originalism is that the interpreter doesn’t always get what he wants. But if the decision to overturn precedent on originalist groups relies on judgment–a weighting of competing factors that are often elusive and difficult to articulate–then the kind of cognitive dissonance reduction that Scalia worries about will creep back in. We saw this with the Printz case. Scalia might have been right to dismiss originalist arguments because of the strength of precedent, but he certainly did not provide much of a defense. I suspect that this was because he did not want to acknowledge that this is what he was doing. (N.B.: Scalia’s statement in Originalism: The Lesser Evil that he would never hold that flogging is a constitutional punishment, regardless of the original understanding of the eighth amendment, is at variance with this idea that the interpreter doesn’t always get what he wants, isn’t it? [It was subsequently pointed out to me that Scalia revoked his earlier statement about flogging. Maybe that is tied to his statement in the same interview that he doesn’t care what his intellectual legacy is.])

Finally, Will says that his theory of originalism offers “safety valves,” including amendment and illegality. I hope to learn more about why one should think that the Article V procedure offers an acceptable safety valve. What are the criteria for determining whether a safety value is acceptable or not? His endorsement of “illegality”–presumably the idea that the justices or other political actors should simply disregard the original understanding when it produces unacceptable outcomes–suggests that Will doesn’t think that Article V is in fact adequate on its own. The illegality safety value raises anew the question of determinacy: how, except by falling back on discretionary and contestable judgments about moral and political values, can one justify ignoring the original understanding? How can originalism ever rule anything out if illegality remains a morally valid option for interpreters and other agents?