Obama compares constitutional interpretation to "a conversation"

On Reading the Constitution (book title) ^ | 1991 | Laurence Tribe and Michael Dorf

[dano1]

Although it is very useful to know how not to read the Constitution, ultimately, judges, legislators, and executive officials charged with interpreting the Constitution must be able to read it. Reading the Constitution does not require an overarching theory of constitutional interpretation. That would be hype-rintegration. But just as we strive to avoid the Scylla of hype-integration, so too must we steer clear of the Charybdis of disintegration. Although we cannot give a completely consistent theory of constitutional interpretation, we can at least sketch some acceptable approaches to the enterprise. If the task we have set for ourselves sounds halting and tentative, it is because the questions to which constitutional interpretation are addressed are so basic and so difficult. More often than not, we have no answers, and those we offer are almost never held with certitude. We do not attempt to offer the last word on the Constitution’s meaning; when a last word is possible the Constitution will have lost its relevance to an ever-changing society. Less ambitiously, but per- haps more realistically, we hope to contribute to a useful dialogue on reading the Constitution, a “constitutional conversation". (p. 31)

[footnote] We are grateful to Robert Fisher and Barack Obama for the metaphor of constitutional interpretation as conversation.

[dano1]

What's interesting about this is that Tribe and Dorf seem to have felt that Obama's concept about reading the Constitution as a conversation was so unique and different that really Obama and Fisher needed to be credited as the authors of the idea.

[joma89]

The Constitution is but a document with words on it. If people do not want to fight to protect the ideals enshrined in those words, the Constitution is worth only as much as the BTUs it will create when burned.

The Constitution is an idea folks. We need to fight for that idea or we will end up living like the folks in Cuba. I, for one, do not want to live like those in Cuba.

JoMa

[TBP]

He really hates the Constitution for the limitations that it imposes on his dreams of absolute power.

Comrade Obama, Fuhrer of AmeriKKKa.

[dano1]

Thinking of Constitutional interpretation as a conversation seems similar to the way Obama treated the ideas of the Founding Fathers in the 2001 radio interview on wealth redistribution - in other words, as non-binding ideas.

Just as a conversation is free to wander off in any direction, so could how we interpret the Constitution if that document is only the starting point of a conversation.