The Living Constitution, by David A. Strauss, Oxford University
Press, 150 pages, $21.95 The Will of the People: How Public
Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning
of the Constitution, by Barry Friedman, Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 614 pages, $35.00 Everybody knows the Supreme Court is
powerful and important, but why should it be? The nine justices
on the Court are not elected to their positions, are not
accountable to the public, and can keep on serving and making
decisions long after the president who appointed them has
retired. What explains the role of the Court in our society, and
what justifies its power? Two new books address these questions,
but in different ways. The first, David Strauss' The Living
Constitution, is a succinct attack on "originalism." This is the
idea (or ideology) that the duty of judges, in a constitutional
case, is to try to ferret out what the Constitution meant to the
people who drafted it, at the time that they drafted it, and
absolutely nothing more. You