In this week’s issue, venturing a thumbnail sketch of Justice Thomas’s brand of constitutional interpretation, I noted a significant difference between Justice Thomas and other conservative “originalists”: Unlike many “first-generation” originalists, Thomas expressly interprets the Constitution as embodying the natural law principles of the Declaration of Independence.
And, perhaps not coincidentally, Justice Thomas is much less inclined to temper his originalist approach with considerations of stare decisis. That is, once Justice Thomas has decided how a constitutional provision should be interpreted and applied in a given case, he is much less likely than others to allow that interpretation be superseded by precedents pointing in the other direction.
