smooth

that's true, but loquitur is correct in claiming that the idea that one would consider society's values and norms in interpreting the law is a relatively new idea.

Before Pound began arguing for a different kind of jurisprudence, sociological jurisprudence, and Holmes arguing that judges make law even when they claim they are simply applying it (legal realism), the dominant thought was that law was box of reason that was and should be self-contained. This was happening in the halls of academia during the 1920's, however, and not until a little later did practicing judges start to follow one school or another.

What you're talking about, that the framers considered later thinkers would figure out rights and such, was really only properly done through case law and common law. Both substantive justice and formal justice have their adherents, but the former is definately only less than 100 years old and came about in response to a range of social issues and coincided with the rise of social sciences (more precisely, sociology) in the US as a new discipline that claimed to be experts in values and norms.

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