Supreme Court justices interpret a living document

This letter is in response to that of Patrick Neylan, published on March 6. Mr. Neylan states that "for the people and the nation, the reality is the Supreme Court is politicized and that is why appointments to the court need to be by constitutional constructionist -- if our Constitution is to mean anything." He goes on to decry the role of President Obama, one laid out very clearly in the document.

I wonder if Mr. Neylan would have written the same letter if we were alive at the turn of the 20th century. What would he have said about the Dred Scott decision handed down by the court in 1857? In that case, Dred Scott's master took him from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a free state). Some people sued for his freedom, but Mr. Scott was denied it because he was property and not a citizen.

This injustice was corrected by the 14th Amendment.

What would Mr. Neylan have said about "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896)? This was the case where a black man, Homer Plessy, was denied the right to ride in a "white" railroad car. It is from this that the doctrine of "separate but equal" came.

We all know that the races in the South were separate but things were never equal. This was true in education, restaurants and movie theaters, among many others. This situation was rectified by the Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Mr. Neylan tends to confuse the U.S. Constitution with the Ten Commandments, which were written in stone for everyone forever. Our Constitution was and has always been a living document re-interpreted for changing times. The Founding Fathers would have had it no other way.

David Gurowsky

Bradenton

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Supreme Court justices interpret a living document ."