WHAT LAWYERS WANT FROM HISTORY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21708/issn2526-9488.v9.n17.p1-11.2025Abstract
Jack M. Balkin’s article explores how lawyers and judges use history in legal reasoning. Rather than seeking historical objectivity, legal actors deploy historical narratives to bolster or undermine claims of legal authority. History is filtered through standardized forms of legal argumentation—such as text, purpose, tradition, and national ethos—which shape what is deemed relevant to law. Balkin also examines the role of lawyers and judges as memory entrepreneurs, showing how legal disputes often become contests over constitutional memory. The article distinguishes the rhetorical practices of lawyers from normative interpretive theories like originalism, highlighting the tensions between strategic uses of history and constitutional fidelity. Balkin ends by defending the historian’s role: even if ignored in current litigation, historical contributions enrich the legal archive for future reinterpretations of constitutional meaning.
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