Interpreting the Constitution

Matt Bishop

US Institutions

2/16/06

The 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 America's 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 today's 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.