Robert Bork began the drive toward originalism with his 1971 article “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems.” He found allies in professors Martin Diamond, Herbert Storing, Walter Berns, and Irving Kristol, who looked at contemporary America from the perspective of classical political philosophy. Chicago Law professor Antonin Scalia, who used to lunch with Kristol in the cafeteria of the American Enterprise Institute, soon joined them. Libertarians Bernard Siegan and Richard Epstein published groundbreaking studies of economics and law in, respectively, 1980 and 1985.

Who says nothing good comes from the academy? All of these men held positions at universities, where they developed their principles, wrote for both specialized and general audiences, and attracted followers who pursued careers in teaching, legal practice, and government.

Scalia was the dynamo. He helped create the Federalist Society at Chicago. He and Bork spoke at the first Federalist Society symposium, held at Yale in 1982. Scalia’s remarks there, “The Two Faces of Federalism,” lamented reflexive conservative opposition to federal power. “Such an attitude is ultimately self-defeating,” he said, “since it converts the instrument [of government] into a tool that cuts only one way.” It was time for government to cut to the right.