When someone tells you that the Consitution is a “living document”, what they really mean is that they want it to die.
Lincoln also rejected the idea that the Sup Court had the final say on all Constitutional matters. In other words he rejected judicial supremacy.
So even if this guy was right that Lincoln would be a champion of the modern day ‘living Constitution’, it also seems that Lincoln would reject the idea that the nation must obey whatever living Constitution nonsense the Sup Court tried to impose.
Interesting, given that Lincoln had contempt for the Constitution. Which, I suppose, would explain his “projected” acceptance of that august compact as a “living constitution,” whose meaning was whatever anyone in power (him included) wanted it to mean.
I have a suspicion this is a politically motivated piece that hits both Justice Scalia and President Lincoln. Has no good purpose!
The whole thrust of the bogus “living constitution” argument is nothing more than an attempt to get around the very stringent amendment process.
How long ‘til they re-frame Lincoln into Joseph Stalin ...
Ity is well known that Lincoln was not happy with his emancipation proclamation. He worked long and hard on the document, but later confessed it to be a”poor”document. He was not satisfied with its legality, although it served as an expedient, and he seems to have concluded that whatever force it had would expire with the end of the national emergency. Which is why he pushed the ratification of the 13th Amendment. One can never know, but I think it could be argued that if he had lived that the 14th and 15th Amendments would never have been passed. Johnson simply let the Confederates get away with things that Lincoln never would, just as he squashed an attempt by Judge Campbell to let the Confederate legislature continue to function as the head of Virginia. As a Southerner himself who had been frustrated by intransigence of the slave owners of the border states in rejecting on principle of compensated emancipation, it seems to me unlikely that he would have allowed any but a state loyal to him and his policies to send representatives to Washington in December, 1865.