Law Commons^™

A Darwinist View Of The Living Constitution, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

The metaphor of a “living" Constitution imports terms from biology into law and, in the process, relies on biology for its meaning. A proper understanding of biology is therefore central to understanding living constitutionalism. Yet despite its rampant use by both opponents and proponents of living constitutionalism, and despite the current fervent debate over whether biology can be useful to the law, no one has evaluated the metaphor from a biological perspective.

This Essay begins that inquiry in an interdisciplinary study of law, science, and philology. The Essay first evaluates the metaphor as it is currently used and concludes that …