Durbin Pushes Back on Originalism as GOP Test for Judges (1)

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) pushed back on a Republican litmus test for President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees that they must be originalists, citing criticism that the Constitution didn’t account for the rights of Black people, women, or other minority groups.

“We should not expect to require every judicial nominee coming before this committee to ascribe to originalism as their judicial philosophy,” Durbin said at the start of a Judiciary hearing on Wednesday.

Originalism is a legal philosophy often held by conservatives and libertarians that generally interprets the Constitution as it would have been originally understood at the ...