Society Evolves
I heard today, via radio headlines, about the very interesting decision from the US Supreme Court striking down the use of the death penalty for those under 18 years old (previously, it had protected only those under 16 years old). I realize that the report was necessarily sketchy; nevertheless, there was a surprise.
Apparently, Justive Kennedy surprised not only me with his finding (writing for the majority) that
[in my words:] Our standards of what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" clearly evolve over time.
Not surprisingly, this was reported to have outraged Justice Scalia, who is a self-proclaimed fundamentalist in things constitutional, believing that the document's meaning is immutable and fixed in time, although he may admit that we have not discovered all of its hidden meaning.
This is an important precedent. It makes explicit what most clear-thinking people have always known: that the US Constitution works best when it is interpreted in the light of changing — one hopes improving — societal standards. It is a brilliantly conceived procedural guideline, but inadequate as a chiseled stone tablet of commandments.
This opens up important new paths to arguing for the wide-spread application of guaranteed liberty, and is another big setback to those (among others) who oppose marriage equality for gay people by claiming that it's "not traditional" and that the founding fathers surely didn't intend to allow it.
Those crafting their constitutional arguments now have additional tools, and are no longer limited to discovering somehow "rights" that have inexplicably been overlooked up to now among the liberties guaranteed in the founding document.
Instead, one is now invited to notice that society's values do change over time and can therefore come naturally to embrace greater liberty for all Americans.