Interesting take on things from the former Justice.

Souter took pains to reject the idea that the plain meaning of the Constitution is always clear, lurking there “in the Constitution, waiting for a judge to read it fairly.” We can all agree that much of the Constitution is not at all clear. (What does “cruel and unusual” mean?) But Souter went on to show that certain provisions of the document are in tension with others. “The Constitution is no simple contract,” he explained, “not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, altogether, all at once.”

This is a much more nuanced take than the “strict costituionalist” vs “activist judge” fulcrum these issues are usually weighed against.     We have a very complex system of laws, rights, checks and balances that, eventually, have to come to a specific point.  Given a changing landscape (nothing in the original Constitution about space rights) and an evolving morality (nothing in the original constiution about women voting or blacks existing), I think his take is quite a bit more based in reality (and its liberal bias).