Literally one mention of the Fourteenth Amendment, lazy assumption that 1791 rather than 1868 meaning of “cruel and unusual punishments” applies. Call it what you want-“cruel and unusual” comes to mind-but don’t call it originalism. https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1385232814619119616">https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/st...

Happens all the time in Eighth Amendment cases. All the time.

This may come off as pedantic or methodologically purist or whatever. 3 things: (1) Some Justices do hold themselves out as methodological purists; (2) this case is abt whether someone who has spent most of their life in cage-and thousands like him-remain there. Details matter.

(3) The 14A was embedded in the Constitution through the blood and toil of the greatest mass movement in our country’s history. Skipping over and glossing the details of it is a profound injustice to the dead as well as the living.

Skipping from 1791 to 1868 because it’s impractical erases the life’s work of countless people, many of whose names are unknown to history because of the injustices that the 14A was designed to put an end to. Let’s not.