A Matter of Interpretation – The Dead and the Living (Constitution)
A Matter of Interpretation – The Dead and the Living (Constitution)

Summary/Abstract: On the face of things, a living Constitution definitely sounds better than its counterpart, a dead Constitution ‐ as William H. Rehnquist playfully puts it, “it would seem that only a necrophile could disagree”. If the question is worth asking a future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, it surely still deserves to be analysed, especially given the rejuvenation of the debate thanks to the Obergefell v. Hodges case (2015) and the almost simultaneous recent publication of two antagonist studies: Jack Balkin’s Living Originalism (2011) and David Strauss’s The Living Constitution (2010) which, despite both having the word “living” in their titles, offer two current and opposing alternatives on the battlefield of legal interpretation of the Constitution.

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