One of the most insidious problems with high school is the bias of all of the books.  As a young person unaccustomed to really looking for bias it sounds cool.  The constitution is a living document.  Wow.  This is so common that no one ever asks if we want a constitution that is a living document.  I prefer a dead one.  Stone dead.  We certainly don't want a living mortgage--changing as conditions change.  That precisely is the cause of all of the mortgage problems we have been suffering recently.  We want laws--not least the highest law of the land--that we can use to predict what would be allowed and what could not.  We certainly don't want to be in a situation where we are operating in a good faith in some action we believe to be legal--only to find out that the laws are changing beneath our feet.

It may sound like I want to reduce Supreme Court Justices to logical postulates, but you should be able to read a justices' opinion, look at the facts of the case and see that there is no other was for that justice to have ruled.  I presume that for most justices, it is true--given their convictions and biases.  When Sandra Day O'Connor retired, people were talking about how she often was the wildcard--the deciding vote and you often would be unable to predict how she would rule.  I don't see this as a virtue.  It seems like she would be rolling mental dice to decide how to rule.  I am sure she didn't.  But one thing we want is consistency.  Predictability in a justice is not, in itself a virtue, but capriciousness is certainly not a virtue.

We want a system of laws that changes only when new situations are encountered for which the status quo becomes inadequate.  We do not want it to change to match the latest political fashion.  We certainly don't want the laws to change because we get a new set of judges.

One of my colleagues once said that we needed to rely on the courts to enact change that protects the minority because the legislatures will always protect the majority.  Really? Is that what happened with Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Furgeson?  The courts were designed to put the breaks on change.  They were the ultimate defenders of the status quo and the last to change as society demanded it.  Now that the liberals find it harder to drum up majorities than to pack courts with liberal judges, all of a sudden it is more convenient to reverse the situation.  When faced with fact, liberals are always able to change the world to meet their world view.  As Dennis Prager once said, conservatives look at the world and believe what they see.  Liberals look at the world and see what they believe.

I haven't read Obama's autobiography (and, looking at my reading list, I may not get to it until he's McCain's age), but Edward Whelan fills me in with Obama's chapter on the constitution, specifically what Obama would think about when picking judges for the Supreme Court.  He talks about a judge with a big heart.  Whelan tells us:

Indeed, in setting forth the sort of judges he would appoint, Obama has explicitly declared: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old--and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges." So much for the judicial virtue of dispassion. So much for a craft of judging that is distinct from politics.

And so much for considering the Constitution when determining the constitutionality of legislation.  And so much for considering what is right.  Not what we want, or what would achieve the result we like, but just what is right.  The Bible tells us not to favor the poor when we judge (Exodus 23:3).   We don't favor the rich or the poor.  We need to be fair and impartial.  We need to follow the Constitution--an entity strangely missing from Obama's criteria. 

As president, Obama should champion and sign laws that do what he believes is right.  Right for the teenage mom, the poor, the African-American or gay or disabled or old.  But his judges should properly interpret the laws on the books. 

To do anything else creates chaos.