Committee chairman Lindsey Graham broached the topic on Tuesday, asking Judge Barrett what it means to be an “originalist.” “In English, that means I interpret the Constitution as a law,” she said. “The text is text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. A legal meaning was an early use, in the contexts of “original writs,” orders issued by the royal Court of Chancery to begin litigation. The suffixes “-ist” and “-ism” were first added in the early 19th century, with a legal usage again leading the way. The Lord Chief Justice, Baron Ellenborough, ruled that the charge should not just be restricted to “the originalists,” meaning the original publishers.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 15, 2020 16:18 UTC