 Disputes between originalists and living constitutionalists are among the liveliest and most contentious to have arisen in constitutional scholarship over the past several decades. Debates have tended to focus on abstract civil rights provisions of constitutions, such as the due process clause of the American Constitution, or Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which “guarantees the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental  justice.”[14]  Given the fixed view to which they are committed, contemporary originalists view anything more than an attempt to discover, so as to preserve and apply, original understandings of such provisions as constitutional revision or ‘construction’, often masquerading as the interpretation of an unchanged  original.[15]  On the other side, we find the living constitutionalists who view originalism as a reactionary, overly conservative theory serving only to tie a democratic community to the ‘dead hand of the past.’ Originalists, their opponents claim, render us incapable of responding rationally and responsibly to changing social circumstances and improved moral views concerning the requirements of the abstract values and principles articulated in modern constitutions. Living constitutionalists, the originalist counters, recommend constitutional practices that threaten a number of cherished values, among them the rule of law and the separation of powers. They are, in effect, happy to place the constitution in the hands of contemporary judges who are licensed, under the guise of interpreting it, to change the constitution to suit their own political inclinations and moral preferences. And this, originalists claim, only serves to thwart cherished values secured by having a stable, politically neutral constitution, and may render all talk of genuine constitutional constraint meaningless.