Originalism (Scalia/Gorsuch strand)
textualism & original public meaning, 1986–present

The originalism framework — Constitution interpreted according to its original public meaning, with judicial neutrality as a methodological commitment — became the dominant conservative legal-philosophy tradition after Scalia's appointment in 1986 and was institutionalized through Federalist Society legal scholarship and the modern judicial nomination process. Cornyn matches originalism on doctrine (his Senate Judiciary Committee role in the confirmations of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett is direct Federalist-Society-tradition work), on Second Amendment maximalism per Heller, on religious-exercise expansion per the modern free-exercise cases, and on the federalism cases. Crucially, unlike Paxton's record, Cornyn's process integrity — no forum-shopping investigations, no State Bar disciplinary cases, no impeachment — satisfies the textualist commitment to neutral methodology that originalism rests on. Talarico's framework wins on procedural integrity and the institutionalist commitment to neutral application of legal rules; he loses on substantive doctrinal positions across most cultural and Second Amendment issues. The widest grade for Cornyn in the jurists cluster — originalism's natural Republican candidate is exactly the kind Cornyn embodies.