The Constitution
The Constitution of the United States was intended by our Founders to be a living document. As society evolved, the Founders expected that the meaning and application of the Constitution would evolve as well. Tools were provided to accomplish that goal. The notion that today we can magically infer what the Founders intended the document to mean when it was written so long ago and apply that original meaning across the expanse of time is ludicrous. The conservative right has found an argument for interpretation of the Constitution that unthinking people easily swallow. It would be better for all of us if the Founders could return long enough to put out a podcast clearly outlining how we should be interpreting the product of their hard work. I fear that unless that happens (sadly it will not) we are on a path that will see the best accomplishments of our history become little more than polluted memories. I for one intend to hold on to those cherished memories even if there are some bent on destroying them.
After writing these words I went out to the mailbox to find this month’s Atlantic Magazine. Emblazoned on the cover were these words by Jill Lepore, a teaser for the cover story inside.
”The authors of the Constitution believed that it could, and should, change over time. The process of amendment is built into the document. Why have we abandoned — and all but forgotten — this essential democratic tool?”
[Inside] “is the story of how partisans of the legal philosophy known as originalism have undermined the process of constitutional evolution envisioned by the Founders. The Constitution is not a living document, originalists say. In the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, it is ‘dead, dead, dead.’ And the only people who can be trusted to interpret its meaning, they argue, are the originalists themselves.”
Pardon me, that is simply wrong, wrong, wrong.