Commentaries On The Constitution

More than once over the years we have heard various members of the Left make the claim that the U.S. Constitution is a “living document”, implying there was no need to amend that august document because it could merely be reinterpreted by the courts at all levels. But all that means is that they know they could never make the changes they demand because the amendment process is onerous, just as the Framers designed it to be. They understood the dangers of making our founding document, our Constitution, easy to change. Such ease would make it meaningless.

As Joseph Story, a Supreme Court Justice, wrote in his Coometaries on the Constitution in 1833:

Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.

Or as Rob Schwarzwalder to put it in more colloquial terms:

...if justice is not grounded in dependably permanent laws that themselves are grounded in the Constitution, all of our rights become matters of any given jurist’s, president’s, or legislator’s whim.

But that's exactly what those who are trying to push the idea of a “living document” Constitution want. They want our Constitution to become meaningless, and in doing so, make it easier to rule through law, meaning they can say a law means whatever they want it to mean at any given moment and penalize citizens, businesses, and organizations as they see fit. At that point our nation becomes an oppressive dictatorship because the laws can be used to silence dissent, either by imprisonment or death. No action will be forbidden by the state because it can reinterpret laws willy-nilly to suit its needs whenever it wants. Our rights disappear and the Constitution becomes nothing but a piece of old paper that is no longer of any significance.

Ironically the same folks who believe the “living document” line being sold by the Left really don't understand that the rigid Constitution and the laws derived from it are the only things protecting them from the Leftist dystopia. All the “living document” doctrine will do is slowly destroy everything our nation is and has stood for until we're no different from the very totalitarian nations we fought against and shed blood to defeat.