New Challenges Facing the Constitution Re "Cry, the Beloved Constitution," by J. Harvie Wilkinson III (Op-Ed, March 12), about assaults on the Constitution from liberals and conservatives: Issues at the intersection of law and culture pose the greatest challenge to our Constitution. Today's views of segregation, reproductive rights and same-sex marriage would have been unthinkable to the founders, and their views would be unworkable for us today. Judges have the hard job of determining when the culture has changed enough that the law must change. The best assurance of constitutional health is the consistent application of the law and all its judicial precedents. The adjudication of same-sex marriage in California has been a model of such judicial rigor, addressing the activist politics on both sides within a consistent legal framework. Other courts may apply equal rigor and reach a different result. These are the growing pains of a rapidly changing culture. These are also the difficulties of working with a very old founding document. Only by respecting its evolution through generations of careful interpretation can we hope to maintain our Constitution in its third century. One comes away from J. Harvie Wilkinson III's paean to judicial restraint wondering what purpose he thinks the Constitution serves and whether it should play any meaningful role in limiting the size, scope or intrusiveness of government. Some of the Supreme Court's most appalling moments have been when it deferred to the base impulses of political majorities and upheld policies like racial segregation, internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, eugenic sterilization and the abuse of eminent domain for ill-conceived "economic development" projects. It is difficult to tell which, if any, of those decisions Judge Wilkinson's highly deferential theory of judicial review would reject. The Constitution is not a majoritarian document, and there is no "inalienable" right to arbitrarily impose our will on other people, whether through naked coercion or politics masquerading as law. CLARK NEILY Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice Arlington, Va., March 13, 2012 J. Harvie Wilkinson III chides liberals for creating "rights from whole cloth," rather than adhering to the rights clearly stated in the Constitution. When 18th-century men wrote and debated the Bill of Rights, a primary concern was that the process of enumeration would limit the rights of future generations to only those enumerated. Thus, the Ninth Amendment was added: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It is entirely appropriate and constitutional for us to continue to identify those rights, even personal rights, that we the people believe are worth protecting. While I'm sensitive to the risks that J. Harvie Wilkinson III sets forth, I don't believe that the Constitution is equally in danger from the left and the right. For one thing, the rights that liberals have affirmed in recent decades have not been created from "whole cloth" but have evolved out of a long tradition of constitutional thought. On the other hand, conservatives haven't hesitated to overturn generations of constitutional jurisprudence to identify new "rights" on behalf of interests and causes they favor, like corporate personhood. As for the political aspect of this issue, liberals have sought, in general, to evoke rights that empower the vulnerable and the oppressed. Conservatives have sought, by and large, to empower the already powerful - exactly what the Bill of Rights was drafted to curtail. Conservatives seem more interested in imposed values - theirs, of course - than in the "shared" ones invoked by Mr. Wilkinson. Where's that in the Constitution? ERIC B. LIPPS Staten Island, March 12, 2012