Although originalism’s emergence as an important theory of constitutional interpretation is usually attributed to efforts by the Reagan administration, the role the theory played in the South’s determined resistance to civil rights legislation in the 1960s actually helped create the Reagan coalition in the first place. North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin Jr., the constitutional theorist of the Southern Caucus, developed and deployed originalism because he saw its potential to stymie civil rights legislation and stabilize a Democratic coalition under significant stress. Ervin failed in those efforts, but his turn to originalism had lasting effects. The theory helped Ervin and other conservative southerners explain to outsiders and to themselves why they shifted from support for an interventionist state powerful enough to enforce segregation to an ideology founded on individual rights and liberty. It thus eased the South’s integration with the emerging New Right.

中文翻译：

---

从软南方战略到新右翼的原旨主义：小萨姆·欧文的宪政政治

尽管原旨主义作为宪法解释的重要理论的出现通常归因于里根政府的努力，但该理论在 1960 年代南方坚决抵制民权立法中所起的作用实际上首先帮助了里根联盟的建立。北卡罗来纳州参议员小萨姆·欧文 (Sam Ervin Jr.) 是南方核心小组的宪法理论家，他发展并部署了原创主义，因为他看到了原创主义在阻碍民权立法和稳定处于巨大压力下的民主党联盟的潜力。欧文在这些努力中失败了，但他转向原创主义产生了持久的影响。该理论帮助欧文和其他保守的南方人向局外人和他们自己解释了为什么他们从支持一个强大到足以实施种族隔离的干预主义国家转变为建立在个人权利和自由之上的意识形态。因此，它简化了南方与新兴新右翼的融合。