OPINION:
The authors of the Constitution included a mechanism for altering the document to suit changes that mark an evolving society (“Inside Obama’s interviews with 5 Supreme Court candidates in race to replace Scalia” Web, March 9). Amending the Constitution was accounted for in the original text as a way of accommodating change and adding elasticity to the law.
Those justices who regard the amendment procedure as cumbersome, however, who see originalism and textualism as unfitting and who are anxious to accommodate more rapid change, specialize in spying penumbras formed by emanations from provisions of the document. ’Out with the objective and in with the subjective’ seems to be their approach, one which the progressive school of interpretation favors. This approach magnifies the importance of the opening on the high court occasioned by Justice Scalia’s death. Those who prefer penumbras from emanations to the cumbersome amendment procedure will achieve a majority with a progressive jurist. That is what is at stake with this opening and explains Republican intransigence.
PAUL BLOUSTEIN
Cincinnati
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