Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the Constitution is “dead, dead, dead,” rather than a “living document.”
“It’s not a living document,” Scalia said on Monday while speaking at Dallas-based Southern Methodist University, according to a report from the Dallas Morning News. “It’s dead, dead, dead.”
Context is everything here. What Scalia’s doing is refuting a legal theory that has the Constitution as a “living document” — i.e., meant to adapt to the times in which it inhabits, rather than a rigid, inflexible document, which is what Scalia believes it to be. Scalia’s philosophy is an irrational one, where the Constitution forces us to adhere to anachronistic — and often sexist and racist — values, but that’s really neither here nor there. It’s a debate that’s been covered many times.
What’s interesting here is Scalia’s wording. Imagine if Sonia Sotomayor or Barack Obama himself had publicly declared the Consitution “dead.” Can you imagine the eye-gouging, hair-tearing phony outrage from the rightwing blogosphere? They’d be swallowing their own tongues in fits of drama queen apoplexy. Yet Scalia says it and not a peep.
It’s always OK when a Republican does it.
