What's Past is Prologue: Democracy in the Age of Originalism.

This essay reviews three recent books that engage with the history and interpretation of U.S. constitutional democracy amid the dominance of originalism by a conservative Supreme Court. Democracies in America: Keywords for the Nineteenth Century and Today, edited by D. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski, and The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story by Kermit Roosevelt III, both advocate for progressive reinterpretations of originalism by emphasizing the transformative significance of the Reconstruction era over the founding period. In contrast, Cass R. Sunstein’s How to Interpret the Constitution promotes a pragmatic approach that rejects strict adherence to any single interpretive theory, urging instead that constitutional interpretation be guided by what makes the constitutional order better in practice. Together, these works highlight ongoing tensions in constitutional discourse between historical fidelity and contemporary democratic values.