Living Constitution

The Living Constitution is a concept in the United States of America, also referred to as loose constructionism, constitutional interpretation which claims that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning or that it has the properties of a human in the sense that it changes. The 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 First, the pragmatist view contends that interpreting the Constitution in accordance with long outdated views is often unacceptable as a policy matter, and thus that an evolving interpretation is necessary. 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. Opponents of the idea often argue that the Constitution should be changed through the amendment process, and that allowing judges to interpret the constitution "impoverish democracy." The primary alternative to the Living Constitution is most commonly described as originalism.