Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.
Interpretation
Each generation shapes its own laws and identity through its actions and values.
Noah Feldman's quote emphasizes the idea that the laws and principles upheld by a society, particularly highlighted through the Constitution, reflect the collective values and priorities of that generation. As societal norms evolve, the judicial system interprets these changes, with the Supreme Court acting as a guardian that reflects and crystallizes the essence of national identity through legal rulings.
In practice
This quote can be used in a civic education class to discuss the relationship between individual values and legal frameworks.
The world is littered with constitutions that have written guarantees of rights but that don't actually deliver rights. What differentiates the ones where rights are real from where rights are fake is that it's in the initial interests of the majority to actually deliver these rights.
I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.
Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul.
To practice Aikido fully you must calm the spirit and go back to the origin.
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
We aren't upset when Paramount makes a $200 million movie that flops, but if a charity experiments with a $5 million fundraising event that fails, we call in the attorneys. So charities are petrified of trying bold new revenue-generating endeavors and can't develop the powerful learning curves the for-profit sector can.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.