Religious Fundamentalism, Constitutional Fundamentalism

One of the books I enjoyed reading this summer was Cass Sunstein's latest, Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America.  Sunstein's aim with this book is to explain the dangers associated with an approach to the Constitution he calls "fundamentalism."   He uses this category to describe those who believe that the only correct way to interpret the Constitution is to give it the meaning it had when it was ratified.

In the future I hope to write further about this book generally and about the constitutional minimalism Sunstein advocates specifically.  I also hope to write more about the parallels between religious fundamentalism and constitutional fundamentalism.  For the moment, however, I'd simply like to quote a passage from Sunstein's preface that I found interesting:

As a constitutional creed, fundamentalism bears an obvious resemblance to religious fundamentalism.  Religious fundamentalism usually represents an effort to restore the literal meaning of a sacred text.  For fundamentalists, it is illegitimate to understand the words of those texts in a way that departs from the original meaning or that allows changes over time.  "Strict construction" of the Constitution finds a parallel in literal interpretation of the Koran or the Bible.  Some fundamentalists seem to approach the Constitution as if it were inspired directly by God. But since my topic is law, not religion, I do not mean to say anything about religious fundamentalism.  It is in constitutional law that fundamentalism can be shown to be destructive and pernicious.  Fundamentalism would make Americans much less free than they now are.  It would constrict the right of free speech.  It would eliminate the right of privacy.  It might well allow states to establish official religions.  It would do much more.

Fundamentalists often assert that theirs is the only legitimate approach to the Constitution.  This is arrogant and wrong.  Fundamentalists like to accuse their critics of bad faith.  But some prominent fundamentalists have not hesitated to betray their commitment to the original understanding when the historical evidence points to results they dislike.  Their willingness to do so suggests that some of the time, they are speaking for a partisan ideology rather than for law.