In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history... [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

A. Kozinski & J.D. Williams, It Is a Constitution We Are Expounding: A Debate, 1989 Utah L. Rev. 978, at 980.