The Madisonian Constitution

[...] Thomas relates the effort of Progressives to recast the Constitution as a living organism without fixed meaning, an effort partially checked by shifting coalitions on the Supreme Court that expressed at times endorsement, at other times disapproval in the name of visions of the preceding antebellum republicanism or natural rights liberalism. [...] Thomas brings up the Reagan Republicans who checked the Progressive/New Deal vision of plenary authority over the economy, but who, with important exceptions (including President Ronald Reagan himself and his attorney general, Edwin Meese), accepted plenary authority of the judiciary over the Constitution and thus conceived of constitutionalism not as Madisonian, but as a matter of limiting judicial discretion, ironically, drawing instead, in Thomas's account, upon the New Deal and legacy of text and tradition to formulate its originalism.