Should Court interpret US Constitution according to authors' original meanings & intent...?

Question

Authors of our constitution & amendments explained clearly what each measure meant, such as whose rights they would protect, how, why, etc. A vital part of the give and take necessary to reach agreement.

Descriptive speeches to congress were also recorded (written) and saved for posterity.

All can be made readily available to the court.

Supreme Court Justices interpret ONLY the words, as written and are not required to review the explanations that led to ratification. (Remember: legislators must be re-elected, often; Justices, by no say of ppl, stay in for life)

Their decisions are often hotly disputed in chambers, seen as nonsensical by the people and cause strife for years.

Q: Should the Court be required to base their interpretations on what the authors and congress said and wrote in order to reach agreement and ratify?

This is only possible by amendment.

In Favor?
Opposed?

Answer 1

Yes.

Answer 2

There are two legal camps - and both are represented on the Supreme Court. One side holds that the constitution must be interpreted as written, with no thought of how the intent applies to modern society - the other holds that you must take into account what the framers were trying to achieve when they wrote the constitution and apply that to our current society.

The fact is, many of the laws we currently believe to be good and useful to society might be struck down if we were to mindlessly follow the letter of the constitution. For example, the courts and congress have hammered out complex compromises on the second amendment; whereas a strict interpretation would ban gun ownership unless the owner was in a 'well-regulated militia' - which would require the creation of local 'armies'.

The 10th amendment effectively forbids the federal government from interfering with programs like education, yet our states would be struggling without federal funding for this important service.

It might be better to have a new constitution drawn up to completely replace the original. We could remove all the wording about slaves, and other out-dated issues, and instead start with a well-worded, relevant document for the 21st century.

Answer 3

there are two views of the Constitution . the first of that of a living document, that it should flow and change with the times. the problem with that view is that it can be stretched into anything. say you are driving down a street and you see a red sign at a cross walk. well if you believe the sign says stop but means go you just drive through it. if you hit any one its ok because you believed it said go. but there is a group who believe that stop means stop and the are called constructionist.and they believe in what is written . there is many things that have been passed by the supreme court that can not be find in the Constitution. matter of fact a few decsions stand againtist.

Answer 4

how can you truly know what they meant when they are no longer living?