Washington • Four decades ago, New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an intellectual Democrat, observed with amazement and regret that Republicans had become the party of ideas. Today, many of America’s most interesting arguments divide conservatives. One concerns the judiciary’s role in the supervision of democracy: Should judges be, as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Robert Bork believed, deferential to majorities, or should judges be engaged in limiting majorities in the name of liberty? Another intramural conservative debate is whether “originalism” is sufficient as a method of construing the Constitution. So, Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate interrogators might usefully ask:
"Originalists" say the text should be construed by discerning the public meaning of its words when they were written.