He begins by distancing himself from the two positions that dominate contemporary American jurisprudential disputes: conservatives who adhere to the original meaning of the Constitution while eschewing the idea of a "living Constitution," and their liberal opponents who oppose them on both counts.

We need to pay grave attention to John Paul II's warning about idealized, unrealistic notions of marriage: "The concept of marriage as a reciprocal gift of the persons would seem to justify a vague doctrinal and jurisprudential tendency to broaden the requirements for capacity or psychological maturity and for the freedom and awareness necessary to contract marriage validly.

In fact, the US has a 100-year jurisprudential tradition of informed consent.