Question

The Constitution is a revered document that guides politics today... but how should it be interpreted? How strictly should we interpret the Constitution? Is America still ruled by "WE THE PEOPLE"? Can it adapt to a 21st century America and does it need to?

Answer 1

Many people interpret constitution in different ways. But the main purpose of constitution is to guide politics & interpret the framework for the government of US. It also gives certain powers to federal government & grants to states. The constitution guarantees the fundamental rights of people. Since different people use constitution for guidance this resulted in various interpretations of constitution.

Therefore there are many ways to interpret constitution & most of the time people do not always consider one interpretation to be right. We will discuss in detail below the categories of constitutional interpretation.

Originalism or original intent:

This is the first & a more conservative thought of school which considers that best way to interpret constitution is to determine the intent of framers of constitution. They believe that constitution should be interpreted in the way that framers meant it to be interpreted. They present several sources like contemporary writings of framers, newspaper articles, the federalist papers & notes from the constitutional convention to advance their point of view.

Modernist or instrumentalism:

This school of thought looks at constitution as if it was ratified today. They interpret the constitution as what meaning it would have today. How the life would be affected if written today. They oppose the originalist view because they consider that constitution will become irrelevant & stale if only viewed through 18^th century eyes. They also admit that constitution doesn’t provide sound view in many areas. They consider constitution to be changing slowly as the beliefs & morals of society progress. Modernist do not reject originalism in its full view as they also believe that there is some historical perspective to it.

What I think is that constitution should be interpreted based on its understanding of what the Constitution “means in current times”.