[William McKinley]

It has been a while since I enjoyed a G-file this much.

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[MarkL]

The simple fact is that the Constitution was designed by the framers to be a "living" document, but that phrase has been usurped by the leftists, who don't believe in "playing by the rules." The framers knew that there would have to be changes over time, so they built that capability into the Constitution: But they designed the method in such a way that the winds of popular opinion would not be able to change things radically. Just like their idea that the Senate was to be a check against the House of Representatives, and the will of the masses... Of course that was shot to hell...

No, the Constitution is meant to change, but not through judicial fiat, but the legislative process, known as amending the constitution. Of course, that process, as well as the concept of a Constitutional Republic is pretty much ignored by nearly all the politicians, and the public simply doesn't know the form of government we're supposed to be living under... Ask anyone on the street what sort of government we live under, and they'll tell you "a democracy." That would have the founders of the USA spinning in their graves.

Mark

[foreverfree]

bump

[William McKinley]

I am not sure if Jonah is your cup of tea, but I found this essay to be quite good.

[Arkinsaw]

I prefer to think of it as "sand" versus "rock" rather than "living" versus "dead".

[Malesherbes]

The conservative Right has a plethora of wise and witty writers and Jonah is right(pun intended) up there with the best of them. The screeds from the Left are usually ignorant, ad hominem, and as boring as a biography by Hillary.

[colorado tanker]

Jonah is 100% spot on.

Someone, I don't remember who, once said the reason more countries have not adopted a version of the U.S. Constitution (very few have) is that they would have to adopt the hundreds of volumes of the Supreme Court Reporter along with it.

[betty boop]

I have three problems with the concept of a "living Constitution." The first is literal. It's simply not true that the thing is alive. The Constitution meets none of the criteria put forward by biologists as indicating life.

Thanks so much for this post, William McKinley!

I disagree with Jonah Goldberg's above observation. That is, I do believe the Constitution is "alive," but not in the sense that the "living document" crowd avers. (If it were dead, America as we know it would also be dead.)

And I do believe that biologists have put forward criteria indicating life which, to me, clearly pertain to the Constitution. Perhaps the most important one is that any living entity is capable of making sensitive adjustments to changes in the environment (internal and external) in which it lives, while at the same time maintaining its own integrity and its identity.

When the Left says "living document," what they really mean is they want a document that can change into something else. Which is not what a living entity does at all: It wants to preserve itself.

FWIW

[Steve_Seattle]

Liberals want a "living Constitution" as a blank check with which to write themselves policy victories which they cannot obtain democratically. And once allegiance to the doctrine of "original intent" is abandoned, there is literally no limit to what the Supreme Court can do. What liberals want is a crypto-dictatorship in which the Supreme Court answers to nothing except itself.

[CGVet58]

way 2 go, Jonah!!! excellent post!

[hosepipe]

The constitution is of course a living document meaning it can and should change. Testifyied to the fact of the amendment process provided. However, the framers did this knowing full well it could be abused. They also made room for revoultion to be legal(2nd amendment). What they did not count on was a people that had no balls. A balless people would be afraid to revolt makeing for some spagetti western searios to play out. With a gang handing out supreme "justice". Better than whiney cowardice pontificateing about "lost rights" that others payed blood to gain.

Maybe they(founders) figured if the people became that disfigured, dictatorship would be better than democracy, and of course they would be right..

[Noachian]

Whether the Constitution is a living document or not is a moot point since the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is - and therein lies the problem.

There's discussion here about what O'Conner will or won't do, but one day she'll be gone and another, UNelected, justice will take her place and this whole arguement will begin again.

The REAL problem is why justices have no electorial accountability to The People. In other words - how do you fire them?

If you owned a business and the person you hired to run the place ran the business into the ground, wouldn't you fire him?

If you owned a sports team and you had a manager who lost game after game, wouldn't you fire him?

So, how is it that we have a Judiciary that is running the Constitution into the gound, on a yearly basis, and we have no way of firing the people responsible?

Justices are APPOINTED for life and are accountable to one one. The Legislature has the authority to regulate the court, but doesn't. What we have then is a rogue court with an aristocratic mentality.

We're not talking about just one ruling. The high court has consistently passed down rulings that alter the social fabric of this nation without any input from The People.

That is LEGISLATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, and it must be remedied.

The Founding Fathers installed a mechanism within the Constitution to remedy such power grabs. An Amendment to to directly elect the Judiciary is the only way to put the brakes on what has become a runaway court.

[Cacique]

I say yes to a constitution that lives by the rules enshrined in it and is interpeted in accordance to such rules. Not a piece of paper deemed open to wild interpretation by fiat, to whomever finds parts of it inconvenient.