According to 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner, writing on Slate.com, it’s time for the Supreme Court – and, indeed, law students everywhere – to stop giving so much deference to that old, musty document known as the U.S. Constitution.
“I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation,” Posner wrote. “Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc. of the 21st century. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post-Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today.”
The "eighteenth-century guys" who wrote the constitution knew that culture and technology would change, which is why they wrote it mainly about principles instead of specifics and why they provided a means to amend it.
The argument that the constitution doesn't apply to the modern world because of technology changes has been specifically rebuked by SCOTUS:
Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.
DC v Heller, 2008
[emphasis added]
It's amazing that a Federal judge could be hypocritical enough that to take an oath to uphold the Constitution and then come out with a statement that it's irrelevant.
