WHEN LAW PROFESSORS SELF-BECLOWN: Another oblivious critique of Neil Gorsuch and Originalism.

In my previous post Out of touch law professor criticizes Judge Gorsuch and “originalism,” I characterized the argument by Richard O. Lempert, the Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology, emeritus, University of Michigan, as “ignorant” because it was “apparently unaware of–and uninformed by–the past 25 years or more of originalist theory, methodology and practice.” Now in the National Law Journal (free registration required) comes a new and similarly flawed critique of Judge Gorsuch by David Rudenstine, a professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University (and its former Dean), which is entitled Gorsuch’s Adherence to Originalism Should Keep Him From SCOTUS. I am sad to say that this piece, like Professor Lempert’s, presents a highly distorted description of originalism, which once again attacks a straw man.

Shocking, I know. But you really don’t want to attract the attention of Randy Barnett with a half-baked criticism of originalism.