Historical analysis is an actual SKILL. You don't just wake up one morning and say "you know what, I'm going to do a history today!" It takes time. And TRAINING. We've been in this originalist moment for DECADES now. Yet the structural of the legal academy has barely budged in response.

Maybe because it's never actually been about history?

It's not about taking history, or the original meaning of the constitution, seriously. It's about imposing an agenda on the constitution. The hidden meaning of "origionalism" is to make things up to support a pre-conceived opinion.

Yet,. knowing what we know about the increasing use of (alleged) history in high-profile, consequential cases, even the elite law schools that produce our judges--Trump hacks and serious judges alike--really have not responded to provide actual training by actual historians.

Alas, when I was in law school in the '90s, the way the legal academy budged was by saying, "Oh my, lots of very important judges and scholars are pushing this 'originalism' thingie, I suppose we must teach it and at least treat it like it's a respectable legal theory." Voila, thirty years later...

Does expert opinion analysis even extend to historical info included in briefs? I’ve never had to do it, and can’t think of it ever being analyzed that way. Because the lawyers are pasting it into the brief it gets treated as legitimate without any training/credentials

So I have a MA in History and dropped out of my PhD program to go to law school. I’m a lawyer now and I’d love to become more engaged with historical analysis in the field of law but I just don’t know how to enter into that area among working groups. Would love suggestions.

There’s no need to learn such a skill, just as there’s no need for veterinarians to learn how to perform surgery on unicorns. Originalism is a myth. It doesn’t exist. There’s no need to learn such a skill, just as there’s no need for veterinarians to learn how to perform surgery on unicorns. Originalism is a myth. It doesn’t exist.

One might also naïvely hope that a movement so concerned with the original meaning of the text would eventually get around to engaging with existing scholarship and research practices in areas like linguistics and philosophy of language, but, alas...