"In a democratic society," Balkin and Siegel write, "courts best perform their institutional role as partners in a larger dialogue: they respond to popular visions of the Constitution's values and help to translate these values into law".
In a country without a written constitution, national values can be slippery.
Yet a 1982 military constitution that values state security over individual rights remains unchanged.
It was a very long judgment – a hundred-odd pages – which was in a way a blessing in disguise, because it gave the Supreme Court a chance to reiterate the Constitution's values of free speech.
American-sponsored "reconciliation" efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban may be fatally flawed if they include demands that Pashtun hill tribes give up their arms and support a Constitution that values Western-inspired rights and judicial institutions over traditions that have sustained the tribes against all enemies.
I say to President Trump and his security advisers, the drafters of these executive orders, to get out of the White House and go to Arlington Cemetery and stand in front of all the tombstones and learn from observation that Muslims, and people from all other faiths, have given their lives to protect the Constitution and values of pluralism and equal protection.
Another reason is that the Constitution contains values that may well exist in tension with each other, not in harmony.
Not only does this ban go against the state's constitution and values, the lawsuit argues, it could negatively impact crucial state industries like tourism and education.
For example, if the Constitution entrenches some values, the conditions of validity of ordinary legislation would include those values.
How can a Justice "interpret" the Constitution without bringing values, assumptions, and biases to bear?
The goal, he says, is "to apply the Constitution's enduring values to changing circumstances".
