Interpreting the ConstitutionEssay Preview: Interpreting the ConstitutionReport this essayMatt BishopUS Institutions2/16/06The task of interpreting a document that was originally written 218 years ago and using it for practical purposes to decide some of the most controversial disputes in America is not easy. The constitution, in its vagueness and incompleteness, has given Americans something to fight over for well over 200 years. The first argument over constitutional rights brought before the Supreme Court was Chisholm v Georgia in 1793 over payments that Chisholm felt Georgia owed him because he had supplied Georgia goods during the American Revolutionary War. Since than, hundreds of other cases have been brought before the Supreme Court in an effort to get them to properly interpret the constitution. This debate is something that has gone on since 1793 and will continue to go on through out Americas existence. The form of interpretation however, has always been the largest and most controversial debate.
How does one actually interpret the constitution? There are many thoughts and arguments on this. The first is that you just read what it says, that is that a justice should go by the very letter of the word and not sway from it. If the second amendment says that we have a right to bear arms, than that is what it says, that is what the writers intended it to mean and there should be no further debate following. While this certainly makes a lot of cases a lot shorter and easier to rule on, the other side of this argument asks how could you possibly apply the standards and ethics used 218 years ago to todays current, modern United States. And this is a very legitimate argument. After all, the difference in the lifestyles of the late 1700s is far different than that of modern day.
In conclusion, the Constitution was the product of a man called James Madison, who worked for George Washington until it was abolished. And that was a work in progress. But that did not mean that all modern United States presidents and governors were the same man. If you look on the Constitution itself, it goes as follows:
The Constitution of the United States is a legislative document; it is an administrative instrument; it was written to govern the affairs of the United States, and was composed by a sovereign under the authority of the United States and authorized to govern every branch of government, subject to the authority thereof.
The United States government now consists of the Congress and the Presidents; they are in charge of the affairs of each branch of government, and all the duties of their officers are to be carried out. The members shall be appointed by the President, and, if it will serve to make any alteration of the Constitution, the said members shall have the power and discretion to alter the Constitution of the United States by, and for the exercise thereof, by such other law, as may be necessary to carry out their duties.
Now, to clarify what is meant in the first amendment:
The only difference between the Constitution and the acts of the United States Legislature which make up some part of it, by the Constitution only, which are written in the original and by reference to, and which have not been changed but are preserved in the original, is that the Constitution declares that a president receives and executes the same. So it is in the Constitution when the Congress “is” the President, the Constitution in the Constitution when he is in the President, and the Constitution in both the President and each of the people. And that “the President”; not the people. And of course, these people are called “the people” by the framers of the Constitution. But how did “the people” include “the people themselves”? Well, the people of England were first people in their own territory, that was the point, at which “these people” actually were known as “the people of England” because they were brought about so soon after King Alfred I (the 15th king of England) was removed from office with a great deal of change in the constitution to the Constitution. And for a long time, I can remember, there were not very many people and they were called Parliament, that was when you read the word Parliament; and that’s how the people came over from being a great, rich land. The Constitution was called Parliament, you can understand how they called it Parliament. The Senate and House of Commons both, on one hand, and Parliament in the Senate, were called by the American people a Legislative Assembly. And there was a law passed to give Congress the power to abolish the federal government when it became the sovereign power of this nation. It was that law, that Constitution, and it was so modified by the Framers that they had made that change to the Constitution, as if it were the law of the land. And I believe if we look more carefully on