Some of the most vehement intellectual opponents of originalism have been historians. The reasons for this disagreement are several. One is that lawyers and historians have different objectives. Lawyers seek the best way to interpret the meaning of a written text. Historians are more interested in the motives of those producing it and the causes that led to its creation. In the case of originalism, this difference has a particular bite. Originalists now seek the public meaning of a text, not the private intentions of those who drafted it. Historians, by contrast, often want to capture the mindsets of the people of a historical period. Another reason may be ideological. While originalist academics tend towards the right, historians are almost uniformly on the left. In any event, the result has been a continual series of skirmishes between originalist lawyers and American historians.
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