Weems V. United States - Citation Regarding 'Enduring Constitutional Rights', Including Privacy

Citation Regarding 'Enduring Constitutional Rights', Including Privacy

"Legislation, both statutory and constitutional, is enacted, it is true, from an experience of evils but its general language should not, therefore, be necessarily confined to the form that evil had theretofore taken. Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth. This is peculiarly true of Constitutions. They are not ephemeral enactments, designed to meet passing occasions. They are, to use the words of Chief Justice Marshall, 'designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.'" (Weems v. United States (1910) 217 U.S. 349, 373)