If you really believe that "interpretation" has become so extreme as to nullify the meaning of words then you must assemble a body of examples and then get a sufficient number of citizens to agree with you so as to result in action. Generalities simply will not do.
None of this is easy. If it turns out that you cannot get a sufficient number of citizens to agree with you then you simply cannot have your way.
Too late, I had already looked up a few cases and found that I was somewhat off track. I'll post it just to give you an idea of what Scalia is saying about the judgment of Roe v. Wade and the basis for that "judgment." I do admit I skip around a bit and should have posted the concurring opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut.
Apparently, I gave Holmes and others more credit than they deserve. Their usurpation of the legislative function of government was not even hidden in manipulating words of the Constitution, but rather in patently rewriting it and inserting laws not there ex nihilo.
In Rowe v. Wade Blackmun openly admits: “The constitution does not explicitly mention any right to privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as [1891], the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts the Court or individual Justices have indeed found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment [here citing cases]; in the penumbras [more cases, esp. Griswold v. Connecticut] . . . .”
Thus, Blackmun admits that his case is not based on the Constitution. Let us then visit some of the more significant of those cases beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut, pointing out critical errors in Douglas’ opinion and also showing what the dissent thinks of his chinanigans.
In Griswold v. Connecticut, Douglas opines: “The association of people is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Bill of Rights. The right to educate a child in a school of the parents’ choice – whether public or private or parochial – is also not mentioned. Nor is the right to study any particular subject or any foreign language. Yet the First Amendment has been construed to include certain of those rights.”
Thus Douglas falsely begins his reasoning. The Constitution does have something to say about these rights, namely that the federal government has no jurisdiction over such matters. This is implicit in the Constitution itself which grants only certain powers to the Federal Government and is iterated in the tenth Amendment in case any missed it: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” --- the 14th Amendment notwithstanding, but more on the 14th later.
Douglas continues: “Previous cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance . . . . Various guarantees create zones of privacy.”
At this point no one should any longer take Douglas seriously. For although the Constitution has words with clear meaning, his decision truly has no meaning. Please, Douglas, do define for me the terms, emanation, penumbra, and zone. And how do such vagueries give life to rights not explicitly stated in the Constitution. In sum where in the Constitution does it state that rights not stated in the Constitution are not only reserved to the federal government to determine but also to enforce in spite of laws of the state and the mores of a people and in spite of the explicit statement to the contrary in the 10th Amendment. This is judicial activism unabashed and having committed a long unimpeded train of abuses to vilify the Constitution and send our country on a track to who-knows-where.
I had intended to further show Douglas’ lunacy, but nothing following mitigates his madness. He merely asserts that “we deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights – older than our political parties, older than our school system. . . .” Even if he is right, the Constitution does not make the federal government the guarantor of that right, but if anything leaves it to the determination of the states.
Moreover, the dissent too found Douglas’ ravings tyrannical and openly said so.
Black expressing offense at Connecticut anti-contraceptive law, nevertheless writes in dissent:
“I get nowhere in this case by talk about a constitutional “right of privacy” as an emanation from one or more constitutional provisions. I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government [whether state or federal] has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision. For these reasons I cannot agree with the Court’s judgment and the reasons it gives for holding this Connecticut law unconstitutional. . . I realize that many good and able men have eloquently spoken and written, sometimes in rhapsodical strains, about the duty of this Court to keep the Constitution in tune with the times. The idea is that the Constitution must be changed from time to time and that this Court is charged with a duty to make those changes. For myself, I must with all deference reject that philosophy. The Constitution makers knew the need for change and provided for it. Amendments suggested by the people’s elected representatives can be submitted to the people or their selected agents for ratification. That method of change was good for our Fathers, and being somewhat old-fashioned I must add it is good enough for me. And so, I cannot rely on the Due Process Clause or the Ninth Amendment or any mysterious and uncertain natural law concept as a reason for striking down this state law. The Due Process Clause with an “arbitrary and capricious” or “shocking the conscience” formula was liberally used by this Court to strike down economic legislation in the early decades of this century, threatening, many people thought, the tranquility and stability of the Nation. See eg. Lochner v. New York, 198I.S. 45. 25 S. Ct. 539. That formula, based on subjective considerations of “natural justice,” is no less dangerous when used to enforce this Court’s views about personal right than those about economic rights. I had thought that we had laid that formula, as a means for striking down state legislation, to rest once and for all in cases like . . .”
Stewart also dissents, also regarding the anticontraceptive law as silly, nevertheless constitutional:
“In the course of its opinion the Court refers to no less than six Amendments to the Constitution: the First, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Ninth, and the Fourteenth. But the Court does not say which of these Amendments, if any, it thinks is infringed by this Connecticut law. . . The Court also quotes the Ninth Amendment, and my Brother Goldberg’s concurring opinion relies heavily upon it. But to say that the Ninth Amendment has anything to do with this case is to turn somersaults with history. The Ninth Amendment, like its companion the Tenth, which this Court held “states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered,” U.S. v. Darby, was framed by James Madison and adopted by the States simply to make clear that the adoption of the Bill of Rights did not alter the plan that the Federal Government was to be a government of express and limited powers, and that all rights and powers not delegated to it were retained by the people and that all rights and powers not delegated to it were retained by the people and the individual States. Until today no member of this Court has ever suggested that the Ninth Amendment meant anything else, and the idea that a federal court could ever use the Ninth Amendment to annul a law passed by the elected representatives of the people of the State of Connecticut would have caused James Madison little wonder. What provision of the Constitution, then, does make this state law invalid? The Court says it is the right of privacy ‘created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees.’ With all deference, I can find no such general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution, or in any case ever before decided by this Court.”
It is as I have stated WILL not JUDGMENT that the Court employs, vilifying and nullifying our Constitution, and amounting to nothing less than a usurpation by an elite and backward few.
P.S. I can go through Lochner v.State of NY as well as the 14th but already this is getting very long.