Ultimately, all constitutional adjudication has a political element to it that cannot be divorced from one's legal views.

JRB makes just this point in one of her speeches when she discusses SDP and how it's not SDP itself that's the problem but the worldviews of the judges that have abused it that's the problem. Here's a quote:

Much to my surprise, when I actually began to investigate the question, I found a small but credible body of scholarship suggesting that, in our history, the due process clause was viewed as a restraint on government, fashioned, in part, to protect the rights of property owners. Apparently, the colonists saw in the due process clause a guarantee which had a wide, varied, and indefinite content. The concept of due process like the words “the law of the land” in the Magna Carta put some liberties and some property interests beyond the power of government. Moreover, the language of the Constitution suggests the drafters clearly distinguished between the limited framework of that document and the whole law.

This revelation was what’s known in the precise, technical language of the judge’s trade as an “uh-oh.” It slowly dawned on me that the problem may not be judicial activism. The problem may be the world view — amounting to an altered political and cultural consciousness — out of which the judges now fashion their decisions.

Even Judge Bork believes in some notion of what you're talking about that laws must have substantive content as well and cannot be arbitrary and capricious. Here's a quote from his hearings:

There is always a rationality standard in the law, Senator. I do not know what rationale the State would offer or what challenge the married couple would make. I have never decided that case. We know that legislatures do and can constitutionally regulate some aspects of family life. There is no question, I think, that these things are subject to some regulation. We have, divorce laws, custody laws, child beating laws and so forth. The question always becomes, has the legislature a reasonable basis for the kind of thing it does here. The sterilization law would probably require an enormous or perhaps impossible degree of justification.

So, I think it's accepted that all laws must pass a reasonable basis test. There are certain laws that even if passed by a legislature and enforced with procedural due process simply don't pass the reasonable basis test. Your spoon law would probably be one, a law enacting a Chinese-style one child policy would probably be another.

The differences come between people like Bork that seem to have a more majoritarian view of things and see rights as intruding on the majority and those that see the constitution as more protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority. There are some that see the legislature as the ultimate expression of the people and the only way to have a fair system and others who feel that the legislature and the people are two distinct and often separate entities.

For example, I don't think that in a state where there are minority groups like gays, various religious minorities and others that at most make up less than 5% of the population, you can really say that they're represented by the legislature. The legislature is ultimately a reflection of the majority.

Some would say that if a bad law is passed, then an amendment can be passed or the legislature can be voted out. But it's not that easy. Clearly a minority group that only makes up say 5% or even more of a population has no chance of passing an amendment. Amendments need 2/3 majorites and broad, wide support. They're very difficult to pass and laws that have already been passed by majorities are not unlikely to be repealed through amendment.Same with elections. Jim Crow laws remained on the books for years. No one in Virginia was going to vote out the legislature or pass an amendment to repeal the miscegenation laws.

It comes down to numbers and if a group only comproses a small pct of the whole, they face a tough struggle. But that's more of a political question than a legal question and I think one's answer ultimately depends more on one's political views and how they see society than on how they view the Constitution.

If you want to see good discussions of the reasonableness concept, I suggest you read Justice White's concurrence in Griswold where he strikes the law not because of SDP but as simply failing to meet the rational basis test. Also, Justice Harlan's dissent in Lochner and the opinion in Williamson v Lee Optical(1942) are also good discussions of this concept.

There are of course different views on this, but it's certainly a topic that has is within the bounds of accepted legal doctrine. There are many things that have sprung up involving ConLaw that have been developed over the years that weren't in the original constitution.

For example the whole concept of strict scrutiny, the "actual malice" libel standard, stare decisis/precedent, the "canons of construction", the idea of coercion/endorsement and what exactly constitutes an "establishment" of religion, these are all things that developed over the years and are not explicitly based on express text.

And this isn't exactly new. If you read the debates from 1787-1791 between the federalists and the anti-federalists, the ratifying conventions debates between people like Henry, Yates, the RI legislature, some others, you'll see that there was debate over the Constitution from the beginning.If you read the respective opinions of Jefferson and Hamilton regarding the National Bank of 1791, to name but one example, you'll see that even the framers themselves had divergent views when it came to constitutional interpretation. Constituional interpretation has always been tied in with politics and how one views society and the nation as a whole.