What Happened to Original Intent?

In the 1965 United States Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court said that “We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights…” This implies that although the “right of privacy” appears nowhere in the Bill of Rights or the Consti­tution, this notion supersedes the Constitu­tion simply because these justices believed that this was a fundamental right. The Court further attempted to justify itself by saying earlier cases “suggest that specific guaran­tees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guaran­tees that help give them life and substance.” Should judges really be imposing their opinions on the people, justified through extremely loose interpretations of the Con­stitution, instead of rationally interpreting the law according to what is actually in the Constitution?

If two or more individuals enter into a contract, they both must abide by its terms. They cannot be changed by one individual without the approval of the other. The Con­stitution – the contract between the United States government and its citizens – is often contorted by the whims of the judges who “interpret” it, while veering from the origi­nal intent of the framers. And unlike a con­tract between two individuals where one can just leave the agreement if the other breaks it, it is a bit harder for American citizens to simply walk away from their country.

The argument that it is impossible to know the original intent is based on the fact that the ideas incorporated in the Constitu­tion did not come from any one person, but are the culmination of multitudes of people who did not always see eye to eye. Howev­er, this basis ignores the fact that, although the framers may not have individually liked every piece of the final product, they all agreed to it. Thus, original intent is not nec­essarily the framers’ own personal feelings taken individually, but what they came to agree upon for the good of the country and what is best for representing all its citizens (excluding slaves, of course), which com­prises the Constitution. With a quick histori­cal background then, it should not normally be too difficult to arrive upon a conclusion concerning the Constitution’s original intent. a conclusion concerning the Constitution’s original intent.

Even if one does know the framers’ mind­sets, many argue judges should take into ac­count what they believe to be morally right according to their time period. However, by doing so, the will of the people is squashed, as is the original intent. Even if a chosen judge’s views are consistent with those of a majority of the people at a given time, it is not a judge’s job to represent the will of the people, according to the Constitution. If it was, power would be concentrated in the hands of a very few who are not elected by the people, at least in the case of federal and un-elected state judges, and in reality do not have to respond to anyone but themselves.

When the framers created the Constitu­tion, they did so with regards to the funda­mental laws of human nature. The nature of human beings does not change; the morals, values, and opinions they hold may, but their very essence does not; the ability to express oneself without infringing upon the rights of others and general freedom, especially free­dom from government oppression, are at the heart of this essence. Thus, the Constitution, as a sort of skeleton of American society, upholds certain fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, but does not adhere to any certain moral principles. Furthermore, should it be seen that morality so essential to the progress of human civilization, such as the abolition of slavery, be incorporated into this contract, it can be done so through the amendment process. The difference between this process and that of whimsical judicial rulings is that the amendment process is al­ready a part of the contract; it is a stipulation in the Constitution that it can be changed under certain conditions. Thus, changing the Constitution by these means does not vio­late the intent of the framers because they saw the necessity to alter the Constitution if the need was great enough in the future. In addition, this allows the Constitution to be changed by the will of the people directly and through their representatives, as op­posed to judges who are not elected by the people and in turn do not represent them.

All of this begs one essential question: why is it important to adhere to the original intent of the framers? The answer is simple. The United States Constitution is one docu­ment; all of its parts are contingent upon each other. Therefore, if one part of the Constitu­tion is “interpreted” incorrectly by a judge who applies his or her own spin, the other parts of the Constitution are altered because what the document as a whole depends on has been changed. When the framers’ draft­ed the Constitution, they did so keeping in mind that a multitude of things, all of which they knew would be included in the Con­stitution, would indeed be there. In other words, they knew everything in the Consti­tution was there to work together. Thus, if judges stray from original intent, the basis for American government and society is thrown into turmoil. The constant adherence to certain constitutional foundations that the framers hoped for is tarnished.

Differences in interpreting the original in­tent of the constitution’s framers are bound to occur sometimes. However, not adhering to the philosophy of original intent is dan­gerous and subversive to the Constitution itself, undermining the will of the people. Interpretations like those used in Griswold v. Connecticut can be used to justify nearly anything judges wish to justify; all it takes is clever reasoning skills so that a decision can be loosely tied to something totally different in the Constitution. The freedom from gov­ernment oppression, which is a fundamental right of American citizens, is showing signs of being dangerously close to being threat­ened with this reasoning as well. This is evi­dent in the case of U.S. v. Lopez, in which a few Supreme Court justices attempted to give the federal government the power to regulate guns in schools as part of the Com­merce Clause. In this case, the government’s argument for such regulation was that guns in schools threaten the learning environ­ment, which in turn produces less produc­tive citizens, and thus hampers the national economy, making it a federal issue.

As James Madison, the Father of the Con­stitution, said: “Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitu­tion, which can only end in a distorted, bas­tardized form of illegitimate government.” Original intent must be adhered to, before the Constitution itself becomes irrelevant.

-Daniel Olds