A little Constitutional logic now and then

I’m behind on the news today, but I did read this book review of Judge Richard Posner’s “Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency”:

The apt title is drawn from a 1949 dissent by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who warned that a failure to "temper … doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom" would risk turning the "Bill of Rights into a suicide pact." This is the heart of Judge Posner's legal philosophy, pragmatism. Best explicated in his 1995 book, "Overcoming Law," Judge Posner's approach is, as he puts it, “instrumental": practical, not dogmatic.

I’m a fan of Antonin Scalia but even he gets tripped up with “originalism” when confronted with Brown vs. Board of Education. By the same coin, it’s a tenuous argument that the Constitution bars us from listening in on phone calls from Yemen.