The Supreme Court’s recent rescue of an important federal agency from the hands of a hostile lower court was an exercise in the evolving definition of originalism.
A mechanism that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit deemed unconstitutional was clearly known to and accepted by the Constitution’s framers, Justice Thomas concluded.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a concurring opinion to say that while the old history was enlightening and adequate to support the agency’s constitutionality, modern practice supported it as well.
“All the flexibility and diversity evident in the founding period,” she wrote, has “continued unabated” when it comes to financing government operations.
Notably, two of the court’s conservatives, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, in addition to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined Justice Kagan’s endorsement of the significance of later, even contemporary, practice when interpreting the Constitution.
Persons:
Clarence Thomas, Thomas, Elena Kagan, ”, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Kagan’s, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch
Organizations:
Consumer Financial, United States, Appeals, Fifth Circuit