Living Constitution

In United States constitutional interpretation, the Living Constitution (or loose constructionism) is the claim that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning or that it has the properties of an animate being in the sense that it changes. The controversial idea is associated with views that contemporaneous society should be taken into account when interpreting key constitutional phrases.

While the arguments for the Living Constitution vary, they can generally be broken into two categories. First, the pragmatist view contends that interpreting the Constitution in accordance with its original meaning or intent is sometimes unacceptable as a policy matter, and thus that an evolving interpretation is necessary.^{[citation needed]} The second, relating to intent, contends that the constitutional framers specifically wrote the Constitution in broad and flexible terms to create such a dynamic, "living" document.^{[citation needed]} Opponents of the idea often argue that the Constitution should be changed through the amendment process, and that allowing judges to determine an ever-changing meaning of the constitution undermines democracy. The primary alternative to the Living Constitution is most commonly described as originalism.

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