We Already Gave Up on the Constitution

photo credit: chuck coker

Two and a half cheers for Louis Michael Seidman, the Georgetown law professor whose “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution” was a dead fish wrapped in the New York Times op-ed page.

Seidman calls the Constitution “archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil.” He’s wrong, but at least he expresses his contempt for the rule of law openly and honestly, instead of insulting our intelligence with insincere twaddle about a “living document.”

The people who pretend to venerate our Constitution as a living document are most responsible for it being a dead letter. They are like parents trying to soften the blow of telling their children that Santa Claus isn’t real by saying he lives on in their hearts.

Imaginary Santas give no gifts and imaginary Constitutions protect no rights.

Seidman exercises his constitutional right to miss the point when he blames the fiscal cliff on the fact that revenue bills must originate in the House, or a “grotesquely malapportioned Senate.” But those are the Constitution’s procedural restraints, the equivalent of Robert’s Rules of Order. We got into this mess precisely by flouting its substantive limits on federal power.

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