Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No, the alternative would be to know what they said the rules are. Problem is, parts of the text are maddeningly vague, and they didn't exactly agree in their politics, so a single, simple, objective and provably correct interpretation of those rules is not always possible. >If you don't think it's an accurate statement of how some judges view the Constitution, make your case. I do think that's an accurate statement…
Well, the former makes the people of the Founding Fathers' generation the master over the Constitution (they ratified it). The latter makes the people of this generation the masters over it. > Problem is, parts of the text are maddeningly vague, and they didn't exactly agree in their politics, so a single, simple, objective and provably correct interpretation of those rules is not always possible. True. >>If you don'…
If I support decisions by previous courts, such as Roe V. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, then the intellectually honest position would be to concede that whomever Trump nominates has the right to do the same. I may not like it, but I do believe that is the Court's prerogative.
I don't think it's harmful to consider updated interpretations of the Constitution per se, although particular decisions can do harm even when they correctly reflect the attitudes of the time (as with Plessy V. Ferguson and segregation.) But then, obviously wrong interpretations can also be reversed. I think that we're a stronger democracy for being able to ask these questions, and consider the Constitution as evolving philosophy as much as a legal document, than if we were prevented from doing so.
>Is it? We don't accept that reasoning with contracts, why should we with the Constitution?
Well... the Constitution isn't a contract. If it were, it would be far more precise and verbose in its language, and you wouldn't have entire bodies of scholarship around the meaning of a comma.
But here we are in 2018, in the age of the internet, global surveillance, 3d printed guns, genome sequencing and a thousand other things the Founders would probably never have conceived of. If we remain bound only by the original intent of the original definition of the words of the Constitution when interpreting challenges and questions of Constitutional law, then I'm afraid the result is going to be that Constitution becoming less and less relevant to modern society.