It strikes me that you don't know what the 'living constitution" doctrine is . . .
That there is a specified process (thus excluding all other processes) to alter the Constitution proves that it is not a "living document".
So by your reasoning because there is a process and a procedure, something is therefore dead. There is a process for properly calculating a course to the moon, and said process must be update with differing calculation parameters so therefore the calculation is devoid of life in the form or corrected data points. I'm not driving across town with you.
It is until altered following the process set out in Article V.
There is no other legitimate way to alter the Constitution and yes, I am including inventive judicial opinions.
Precisely. And the framework is not subject to reconsideration, tweaking or "adapting to the present" because someone thinks they are no longer applicable to our modern, enlightened condition. The Article V process is the
only manner for tweaking or "adapting to the present" . . .
Now all of that flies in the face of 223 years of jurisprudence. I believe it was onlr recently that we were discussing Plessy v Fergusen and Brown v Board of Education,. Isn't it amazing that two different courts considering essentially the same issue decided the constitution meant two significantly different things. Both were 14th Amendment cases, and to my knowledge in the intervening years, the 14th amendment had not been altered.
Me saying the Constitution is not a "living constitution" does not mean I am arguing the Constitution is unchangeable. The Constitutional recognition of the right to vote of Blacks and Women with the federal requirement that states respect that right, was established using the correct and proper Article V process of altering the Constitution. It wasn't conjured into existence and decreed as the law of the land . . . as the "living document" doctrine would allow.
o goddy, goody. So the Bill of Rights is inadequate to address all issues of National consequence.Yeah you are getting the point, because under your logic thus far interstate commerce would not exist.
Unfettered authority of the judiciary?
Well, there's proof that you either never read the case or are just purposefully ignoring what it says to serve your anti-Constitution agenda.
Suffuce to say short exer[s of the decision are inadequate to explore the full scope of the decision which I have addressed in two other posts.
"[T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.
Why otherwise does it direct the judges to take an oath to support it? This oath certainly applies, in an especial manner, to their conduct in their official character. How immoral to impose it on them, if they were to be used as the instruments, and the knowing instruments, for violating what they swear to support!
The oath of office, too, imposed by the legislature, is completely demonstrative of the legislative opinion on this subject. It is in these words: 'I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich; and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent on me as according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the constitution and laws of the United States.'
Why does a judge swear to discharge his duties agreeably to the constitution of the United States, if that constitution forms no rule for his government? . . .
If such be the real state of things, this is worse than solemn mockery. To prescribe, or to take this oath, becomes equally a crime.
It is also not entirely unworthy of observation, that in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the constitution, have that rank.
Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument."
MARBURY v. MADISON, 5 U.S. 137, 179-180 (1803)