ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that American originalism is America's distinctive way of invoking cultural memory and arguing about the nation's political and legal traditions. American political and legal discourse is shaped by American cultural memory. In American memory, the revolutionary founders of the American nation, and the framers of the American Constitution are conflated as 'The Founding Fathers', the 'Founders' or the 'Framers'. Americans share an origin story about how they came to be Americans. According to this story, the American state, the American nation, the American people and the American Constitution were born virtually at the same time. America was created through an act of political revolution. Equally important this revolutionary act was a self-creation, in which Americans acted as the midwife to their own birth. Through political revolution, the American people brought themselves into being as Americans and created a state and a Constitution under which they still live.
