Brain Fertilizer

Interesting article here exploring Constitutional Originalism.

For me, the answer is simple: We shouldn’t respect the original meaning of the Constitution simply because the “forefathers” wrote them, i.e., they weren’t omniscient Gods. We should, however, respect the original meaning of the Constitution in order to be consistent with the Rule of Law. The forefathers weren’t infallible, but they did think about everything they wrote into the Constitution. They weren’t short-sighted or ignorant. They considered, and fought, and argued, and consulted, and the result of the entire mess was a dang good document that has served us well for decades upon decades. I do not say “centuries”, because I think it was under FDR that the Supreme Court stopped depending on the original intent, and started enacting “social justice” based on what the Justices thought was the right thing to rule. Which is, by definition, Rule of Man. The system hasn’t collapsed, of course – far from it! – but the integrity of the Constitution has been compromised by activist* Justices who make rulings based on socio-political desires, foreign caselaw, and current trends (imagined and otherwise) of current societal opinion.

*By “activist Justice”, I’m not using the current Democrat/liberal meaning of “handing down a ruling I don’t like”; I’m using the original meaning of the phrase, which means: “sidestepping the Constitutional methods of revising the Constitution by “penumbras” and similar legal and/or semantic games in order to produce new Law or interpretations of Law that satisfy socio-political ideology.”

The Constitution is a Contract between the People and the Government, and among the Peoples. The Supreme Court should not legislate from the bench, no matter how popular the issue. If it is so pressing to have a new interpretation of original Law, the Constitution provides for its own amending. We should stick to that.