Professors Richard Boldt, Donald Gifford, and Christopher J. Robinette publish “When Originalism Failed: Lessons from Tort Law”

On December 1, 2023, Professor Richard Boldt, along with Professors Donald Gifford and Christopher J. Robinette, published “When Originalism Failed: Lessons from Tort Law” in the Florida State Law Review. The authors discuss how two recent Supreme Court decisions in Dobbs and Bruen used a specific type of originalism to overturn reproductive rights and invalidate a state regulation related to carrying concealed weapons. They explore how such originalism has been used in prior high-profile torts cases that also raised constitutional issues, and focus on two problems with using this type of “rigid historical approach to constitutional interpretation.”