In Living Constitution, Dying Faith, political scientist and legal historian Bradley Watson shows how the contemporary adoption of the ”living” Constitution has developed from the radical transformation of American political thought. The book, available in January from ISI, traces this transformation to the philosophies of social Darwinism and pragmatism, and it demonstrates why today’s contemporary jurisprudence is so alien to the constitutionalism of the American Founders.
As Watson indicates in an interview, this approach dominates our law schools — with negative consequences for the nation:
[These schools] emphasize historical progress and process rather than faith in eternal verities, and this lack of faith is transmitted to law students who will become, whether we like it or not, constitutional arbiters for the rest of us. As history demands new constitutional interpretations, they will stand at the ready to provide them.