Michael Rappaport (University of San Diego) has a post entitled The Authority of the Constitution and its Meaning on The Right Coast. Here is a taste:
Normative justifications for following the Constitution tend to fall into one of two categories. Either they are substantive (the Constitution does a good job) or procedural (the Constitution is binding because of the way it was enacted). In both cases, the justification will not merely turn on the Constitution, but also on how it is interpreted. First, consider the substantive justification. How the Constitution is interpreted will affect whether it has a good or bad substantive content. If one views the Constitution as authoritative because of its desirable content, one cannot know whether it is authoritative until one knows how it will be interpreted.
Similarly, procedural justifications are affected by how the Constitution will be interpreted. If one believes, for example, that the Constitution is binding because it was adopted by representatives of the people under supermajority rules (as John McGinnis and I have argued), one would also be concerned with the method of interpreting the Constitution. One would presumably pick a method that connected the Constitution with those who adopted it. For example, one might select the interpretive rules that the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution would have employed.
I have learned a great deal from Rappaport’s careful thinking about the constitution. Read the whole post!