For my part, I do not worry about my old Constitution ‘obstructing modernity’, since I take that to be its whole purpose. The very objective of a basic law, it seems to me, is to place certain matters beyond risk of change, except through the extraordinary democratic majorities that constitutional amendment requires. Thus it seems to me no more valid a criticism of old constitutions to say that they ‘obstruct modernity’ than it would be a valid criticism of artillery pieces, for example, to say that they kill people, or of airplanes to say that they get high off the ground. The whole purpose of a constitution – old or new – is to impede change, or, pejoratively put, to ‘obstruct modernity’.

Antonin Scalia

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