Meaning of Constitutionolatry | Babel Free

Definitions

The worship of the Constitution.

nonce-word, uncountable

Examples

“[…] the written Constitution bequeathed by them to the country became a Holy Scripture. A man was permitted to think as he pleased about the Bible; but it was accounted blasphemy to whisper a suspicion that any clause in the American Constitution was not written by Divine inspiration. Our fathers had devoured Metis herself, and lo! panoplied Wisdom sprang from their brain. This Constitutionolatry was real in the first generation after the formation of the Federal Union.”

“Yet we find even Mr. Gladstone praising our Constitution as the creation of the men in 1787; and in America there has been a kind of Constitutionolatry which has tended to obscure the historic origin of its methods and principles through the very intensity of the admiration felt for its wisdom.”

“The Constitution-olatry that holds a secular document as sacred, despite its flexibility in the hands of the Justices of the Supreme Court; the popular belief that has grown up that the Supreme Court alone has the final power of interpretation over not only the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government, but also over the states in matters not only legal but often executive and political, and the fact that the Judges rule practically for life without any necessary restraint whatever from popular opinion and will—all these factors make the Supreme Court in many varied matters an almost absolute dictator of an otherwise democratic republic.”

“In 1776 it was the tyranny of a despot; in 1936 it is the pressure of the dead hand upon the living present; a constitutionolatry like that of the Scribes and Pharisees for the Pentateuch, of the Talmudic rabbis for the Mosaic code.”

“Constitutionolatry / Many good epigrams have been coined about the British constitution—that myth—but it always pleases me to find one I had not heard of before. My latest discovery I owe to J. E. C. Bodley, Dilke’s secretary, who, in his classic work on France published in 1898 and in the course of some pungent remarks about continental anglophilia, said of the British constitution: ‘As the Church of England says of one of its sacraments, it is not intended to be “carried about or worshipped”.’ Alas! it is not in much danger of that these days.”

“Justice Leroy Matson wrote the court’s opinion. An earnest lawman given to fussy detail, constitutionolatry, and dryness of touch, he drily allowed Pierce to keep the field.”

“THE DANGERS OF CONSTITUTIONOLATRY / Sterba’s Disturbing View of the Role of Constitutional Rights / A Commentary / Robert C. L. Moffat”

“The parallels between the “Bibliolatry” of Milton’s day and the “Constitutionolatry” of ours are striking.”

“There has been a strain of Constitutionolatry that dismisses the Antis as bitter and indebted farmers and shiftless mechanics, indurated knuckledraggers all, who darkly and unfairly viewed the document as having been framed by aristocrats in the service of the money power.”

“@jianghomeshi American "constitutionolatry" is so bizarre. It was written TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Things change, moron!”

“Constitutionolatry isn’t about the contents of the Constitution. It’s about claiming privileged access to the divine Word that is presumed to have created it, the voice of the Lord that can whisper in the ears of individual citizens and give them an authority that trumps that of Constitutionally-elected officials.”

“Many if not most of those Constitution-wavers really don't know or care care what the document says. They wave it to cast a ceremonial blessing on their opinions. It's Constitutionolatry, a word I just made up, which means the worship or idolatry of the Constitution, without being mindful of its contents. It's a kissin' cousin to pistolatry, the worship of guns. […] Pistolatry and Constitutionolatry are kissin' cousins to bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible without being mindful of the cultural or historical contexts in which its books were composed.”

“What’s weird (to me too) is what you might dub constitutionolatry - the notion that the Founders were geniuses who discovered the uniquely best way to govern society. So much American political debate is conducted through “interpreting” the Founders’ constitutional intent.”

CEFR level