The (Un)Written Constitution

With the appointment of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, jurists in the mold of Justice Scalia, textualism and originalism are more prominent then ever before. These justices insist that in interpreting the Constitution, they focus on text while other justices neglect the Constitution. In The (Un)Written Constitution, George Thomas reveals that textualists and originalists rely on unwritten understandings that shape their reading of the Constiution's text. Our most pressing debates over how to interpret the Constitution are debates about unwritten ideas, not the text. And these debates have been with us from the creation of the Constitution to the present.