What is "perfectly understandable" to you might not be perfectly understandable to someone else. For example, the Second Amendment includes the qualifier about "a well-regulated militia." The amendment is very poorly written and the grammar is atrocious (even for the 18th century). Interpreting it isn't exactly a no-brainer.
Another example: Throughout Article II of the Constitution, the president is referred to as "he." Is this pronoun being used in the masculine sense or the neutered sense? If we're going by original intent, I would have to assume it is the former.
Another example: The president can (and shall) be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Jaywalking is a misdemeanor. Smoking in a public building is a misdemeanor. Should the president be impeached for these offenses?
I'm not suggesting that "free speech" be interpreted to mean "no free speech." But the Constitution is intentionally vague, and for good reason. Many people who claim to support a strict interpretation are the same people who would like to pretend that the Ninth Amendment simply does not exist.
I have a difficult time reconciling the Ninth Amendment with any attempt to derive the "original intent" of the Constitution.
High Crimes and Misdemeanors is a PHRASE... it is not
1. High Crimes
and
2. Misdemeanors
High Crimes and Misdemeanors refers to "
High" crimes Against the State.
High Misdemeanor is a term that derived from old English Law:
a number of positive misprisions, neglects and contempts. The most important example being that of maladministration in high office.
High misdemeanor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So no, understanding this, your example is not open to interpretations. Bill Clinton was guilty of this due to lying under oath, which even then, used to mean violation of one's oath.
Meaning of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"
Also, a Well Regulated Militia is
PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE as well
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
FindLaw: U.S. Constitution: Second Amendment
Being necessarry to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed in order to maintain a well regulated militia.
Easy.
A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Saul Cornell ? Here is a description.
Description
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong.
Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right-- an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia.
He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders.
Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts.
Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century.
Oxford University Press: A Well-Regulated Militia: Saul Cornell
This is almost exactly what I have been saying here for a long time about the Founders too... and this is a post that was ignored.
English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries: force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government, the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.
These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists. The check on all government, not simply the federal government, was the armed population, the militia. Government would not be accorded the power to create a select militia since such a body would become the government's instrument. The whole of the population would comprise the militia. As the constitutional debates prove, the framers recognized that the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual's right to arms, thus empowering the people to resist tyranny and preserve the republic. The intent was not to create a right for other (p.1039)governments, the individual states; it was to preserve the people's right to a free state, just as it says.
Valparaiso Univ. Law Review
Valparaiso University Law Review
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important." --Thomas Jefferson, 1803.
"[The] governor [is] constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms." --Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811.
the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals; rather, it merely recognizes the right of a state to arm its militia. This “states’ rights” or “collective rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment has been embraced by several of our sister circuits. The government commended the states’ rights view of the Second Amendment to the district court, urging that the Second Amendment does not apply to individual citizens.
USA v. Emerson (5th Cir. 2001)
The US Constitution is specific.
It is layed out in a structured fashion so that people cannot "interpret" its meaning in order to corrupt it.
Originally Posted by Ethereal
Societies may evolve but the ideals laid down in the Constitution will never change. Freedom is freedom, individuality is individuality, law is law. The Founding Fathers understood that things would change, hence the inclusion of an Amendment process.
Correct. There are no "interpretations"... if there were, we could "interpret" the entire US Constitution. That is ludicrous.
I am not sure why some people feel that some parts can be interpreted while others are obvious.
