The Eighth Amendment proscribes “cruel and unusual” punishments. But punishments contemporaneous with the ratification of this amendment included branding, pillorying, whipping, and mutilation. Would originalism allow these?

Holmes said: “I don’t care what [the Constitution’s Framers’] intention was. I only want to know what the words mean.” But can the meaning of words be severed from the intentions of those who use them?

Abraham Lincoln said the Declaration of Independence is the “apple of gold” that is “framed” by something “silver”: the Constitution. Silver is less precious than gold; frames serve what they frame. Do you believe that the Constitution’s authors intended their words to advance what the Declaration began — the securing of natural rights? Do you agree (as the Goldwater Institute’s Timothy Sandefur argues) that the Declaration is logically as well as chronologically prior to the Constitution: The Declaration “sets the framework for reading” the Constitution as a charter for government “instituted” to “secure” pre-existing rights?