As the confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, got underway on March 21, Republicans pushed for a stricter approach to interpreting the Constitution, while Democrats, who have historically supported a looser interpretation, pushed for a less textually limited approach. Republicans have long warned against the danger of justices “legislating from the bench,” or using their role in the judiciary to effectively make new laws rather than leaving that power to Congress. Supporters of a stricter interpretation of the Constitution have pointed to cases such as Roe v. Wade as an example of such an overreach of power. In that case, the Supreme Court effectively barred states from outlawing abortion in the first trimester and required that they not impose significant hardships on citizens in their state that receive an abortion. In Obergefell v. Hodges, a controversial case that …