The Constitution is Not a "Living" Document

No matter how much our current times differ from those of the Founders', the Constitution applies. It is rigid and unwavering. The only acceptable changes to it are ones that advance the cause of protecting individual rights (e.g. the 13th Amendment). And Supreme Court Justices are responsible for making their decisions based on its concrete laws. No empathy allowed. The left believes that it's a "living" document, that it is outdated and can be reinterpreted to meet the popular notions of the times in which we live. Take this op-ed from the New York Times, where the author bashes some recent Supreme Court decisions:

Rulings by conservative justices in the past decade make it perfectly clear that they do not “apply the law” in a neutral and detached manner. Consider, for example, their decisions holding that corporations have the same right of free speech as individuals, that commercial advertising receives robust protection under the First Amendment, that the Second Amendment prohibits the regulation of guns, that affirmative action is unconstitutional, that the equal protection clause mandated the election of George W. Bush and that the Boy Scouts have a First Amendment right to exclude gay scoutmasters.

I am not a conservative, but these decisions are each consistent in protecting our Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights. To the author, these were all subjective decisions based on personal interpretations of the Constitution, but only because he disagrees with the outcome. The author thinks that "empathetic" judges are necessary for a modern (progressive) interpretation of the document:

First, empathy helps judges understand the aspirations of the framers, who were themselves determined to protect the rights of political, religious, racial and other minorities. Second, it helps judges understand the effects of the law on the real world. Think of judicial decisions that have invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage, granted hearings to welfare recipients before their benefits could be terminated, forbidden forced sterilization of people accused of crime, protected the rights of political dissenters and members of minority religious faiths, guaranteed a right to counsel for indigent defendants and invalidated laws denying women equal rights under the law. In each of these situations, in order to give full and proper meaning to the Constitution it was necessary and appropriate for the justices to comprehend the effect that the laws under consideration had, or could have, on the lives of real people.

With the exception of the welfare case, all of these decisions were consistent with a concrete interpretation of the Constitution. Empathy need not be involved, and is proof that if honored explicitly, the Constitution protects individual rights. The author would have you think that without empathy, these decisions never could have been reached. Without any ammunition to support his "living" document theory, he has simply fabricated it.

It [the Constitution] defines our most fundamental rights and protections in open-ended terms: “freedom of speech,” for example, and “equal protection of the laws,” “due process of law,” “unreasonable searches and seizures,” “free exercise” of religion and “cruel and unusual punishment.” These terms are not self-defining; they did not have clear meanings even to the people who drafted them. The framers fully understood that they were leaving it to future generations to use their intelligence, judgment and experience to give concrete meaning to the expressed aspirations.

To someone who values freedom and who recognizes that a government's purpose is to protect individual rights, these terms are not open-ended: they are as concrete today as the day they were written. Anyone who uses the "living" document argument has one goal: control of your life.

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” - Patrick Henry