"the Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead; or as I prefer to call it, enduring. (Laughter.) It means today not what current society, much less the Court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted. "
That is the "Madisonian" view:
Madison: "[T]he legitimate meanings of the Instrument must be derived from the text itself; or if a key is to be sought elsewhere, it must be . . . in the sense attached to it by the people in their respective State Conventions, where it received all the authority which it possesses.
Letter to Thomas Ritchie, September 15, 1821 (Madison, 1865, III, page 228)
Another error has been in ascribing to the intention of the Convention which formed the Constitution an undue ascendancy in expounding it. Apart from the difficulty of verifying that intention, it is clear, that if the meaning of the Constitution is to be sought out of itself, it is not in the proceedings of the body that proposed it, but in those of the State Conventions, which gave it all the validity and authority which it possesses.
Letter to N.P. Trist, December, 1831 (Madison, 1865, IV, page 211)
The "Federalist" may fairly enough be regarded as the most authentic exposition of the text of the federal Constitution as understood by the Body [Constitutional Convention] which prepared & and the Authorities [state ratifying conventions] which accepted it.
Letter to Thomas Jefferson, February 8, 1825 (Peterson, 1974, 2. page 383)
Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?
Letter to Mr. Ingersoll, June 25, 1831 (Madison, 1865, IV, page 185) "
I wonder what Founder the "living document" crowd could call their own? None, I think, and that shows the folly of their view.