An article from last October's "Keeping Faith with the Constitution in Changing Times" symposium, co-sponsored by Constitutional Interpretation and Change Issue Group and Vanderbilt University Law School. The symposium was held at Vanderbilt University Law School in October 2006.

Erwin Chemerinsky, Alston & Bird Professor of Law at Duke University, exposes originalism’s “false promise of constraining judges” in Constitutional Interpretation for the Twenty-first Century. Professor Chemerinsky asserts, “The goal is to develop an understanding of the Constitution for the 21st century. It makes no sense to find this by looking to the 18th century. Throughout American history, the Supreme Court has decided the meaning of the Constitution by looking to its text, its goals, its structure, precedent, historical practice, and contemporary needs and values. This is what constitutional law always has been about and always should be about.”