Agreed with savant.
The Constitution’s purpose is to be a long-lasting documentcapable of embedding moral stability and RIGHTS of the citizens.  Additionally, the job of a Supreme Court justice is not to decide what has changed in society and adapt the Constitution to it.  That privalege belongs to Congress via AMENDMENTS!!!!
By looking at the Constitution through an originalist lense, one is helping to ensure the values put forth by the founders.  Those values are not societal, such as SLAVERY, but rather the ideals the founders wished to accomplish in the future.
The founders made the Constitution to bend and grow with the union so that the ideals would remain intact even if countless amendments were to be ratified.

The concept of a living constitution sneaks around this obstacle quite cleverly by declaring that individual judicial interpretation is enough to justify one’s opinion.

For example: A child victim of sexual abuse was brought into court to testify against the defendant.  However, the judge allowed the frail child to testify in a separate room from the defendant while the others watched via closed circuit television.  This is in DIRECT violation of the Constitution.  The sixth amendment says that “ALL” criminals shall enjoy confrontation with the witnesses against them.  This “confrontation” is necessary to weed out liars from truth tellers.  The pressure of accusing someone to their face will more likely bring out the truth.  Thus, the decision made via Living Constitution completely overlooked the basic ideal and made the court less efficient.
(This is an actual case brought before the US Supreme Court)

With no major guidelines to facilitate the interpretation of a living constitution, there can be no assurance that another court won’t interpret it differently and consistently make the outcome uncertain regarding similar cases.

savant,

Your final statement applies to you.

The Constitution does allow judicial fiat to trump legislation where constitutionality is involved, but you’re right, it doesn’t allow changing of the Constitution by judicial fiat.

So tell me, where and when has ANY court changed the Constitution by judicial fiat? Name one instance. Not even in Roe did they do that. While the right to privacy is not, perhaps, explicit in the Constitution, it so pervades the underlying principles of the Bill of Rights that it can be said to be the inherent basis of many of them. The framers obviously found the right to privacy to be so essentially obvious that they didn’t even think to make it explicit, except in that they WERE explicit in limiting how that fundamental right to privacy could be infringed upon. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights is explicit in stating that the Rights enumerated are not granted Rights but Rights inherent to the People, and that they are NOT to be construed as limiting the Rights of the people… a fact most jurists, legislators, and executives seem to conveniently forget. Fortunatly, the Roe Court remembered it.

Scalia and his ilk are simply wrong.

In my humble opinion, it is nearly pointless to continually point out the regressive thinking of people with power, such as Judges Scalia, Alito, Roberts, U.N. Ambassador Bolton, Attorney General Gonzales, and, innumerable other Bush administration appointees.
It’s not as though they’ve been wolves in sheep’s clothing.  They all have come with sufficient histories that any principled individuals would have had more than enough ammunition wherewith to have anticipated where they intend on taking our democracy.
Each one of these human WMD’s has espoused his opposition to the enlightenment(s), and, advances of society, such as was accomplished during the 1960’s, and, only the dumbest among us could pretend that they didn’t know that they were tacitly referring to the gains in civil rights, and, the public expression of opposition to fraudulent administration policies, such as the Vietnam War.
The hijacking of what once supposedly belonged to “we, the people” has been accomplished, so much so that they no longer have to speak in code, or, hide their disdain for all, except for the wealthy, powerful, and/or, White.
As a Black Man, I’ve got more respect for a David Duke, because, at the very least, he was honest, and, up-front about who he is!  The only difference between what Mr. Duke had in mind, and, what is rapidly becoming our reality, is that David Duke would have attempted to limit the ill-effects of his policies to non-Whites.

truthdig…

Umm he didn’t say they got it right the first time, he said it is a legal document that has a method to be changed via the legislature…NOT judicial fiat.

fool.