A "living Constitution" approach, Scalia said, gives a judge far too much interpretive latitude.
This is the living Constitution of the liberals on today's Court, not the entrenched document of the marriage dissenters.
It is how Britain's "living constitution", in Walter Bagehot's phrase, has emerged, through parliamentary grandstanding and contestation, and the process has provided good sport for those concerned.
But there is no better example of the living Constitution than the conservative re-casting of the Second Amendment in the last few decades of the twentieth century.
They mock the so-called liberal idea of a "living" constitution, whose meaning changes with the values of the country at large.
It doesn't matter if you're an "original intent" guy, a "living Constitution" gal, or a "plain language" purist: routine supermajorities are a big fat no-no.
A living Constitution proponent may, in practice, be trying to figure out what the Constitution actually means rather than what society now needs it to mean.
Ever since he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, in 1986, he dedicated himself to combating the notion of a "living" Constitution that evolves in step with the nation.
Only in recent times, he added, have judges become enamored of an approach based on—"Oh, how I hate the phrase!"—a "living Constitution".
Sonia Sotomayor echoed conservatives in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year by rejecting the idea of a "living" Constitution that evolves, and even President Obama recently said the court had gone too far in the past.
