The American Constitution: The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights

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The Constitution and The Bill of Rights The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are looked upon by the American people as priceless artifacts, constructed perfectly by the founding fathers over 200 years ago, but is that the case? Is the Constitution, the document that built our government from the ground up, dead? Can we interpret it to fit our modern technologies? I am going to go more indepth on these questions and unravel my opinion on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Let’s start off at the beginning; the founders gathered in 1787 for the Constitution Convention, the purpose was to ratify The Articles of Confederation. Ultimately, they drafted the US Constitution. “Despite what some believe, the 55 men that met in Philadelphia and hammered out a new form of government, were not gods” (Green). However, they were extraordinary for their time, many were rich property owners and an astonishing over …show more content…

I believe it is neither, I’ll explain why later on. A living Constitution would be a document that shapes to modern time and is still relevant today, while a dead Constitution would be a document that worked back then, but doesn’t fit our modern times needs. Edwin Vierra states, “what it meant in 1789, is what it means today”(Perry). The language has changed over time, but the original meaning does not. This excerpt from Original Intent or Evolving Constitution? Two Competing Views on Interpretation, in my opinion, shows how the courts can skew the interpretation of the Constitution to fit their needs. “[t]he text of the document and the original intention of those who framed it would be the judicial standard giving effect to the Constitution” (Lasser, 1996: p. 443). Original intent thus signifies constitutional interpretation that attempts to determine the initial meaning of the text as revealed by the intentions of those who produced it (Hall, 1992: p.

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