Teach the First Amendment and Constitution Day. Constitution Society Home Page. Forgotten Founding Fathers. This Saturday is July 4, a day when Americans of all shapes and sizes will come together to commemorate the founding of their country, and the noble pursuit of life, liberty, and overcooked hamburgers. Here's a quick quiz question "“ how many people signed the Declaration of Independence? We're betting that few of you, not including the people who compulsively Googled that question, knew the answer is 56. Fifty-six?! Yes, there were far more Founding Fathers than most people learn about in civics class. 1. Yes, it's true: not all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were in favor of independence. At age 15, Read began studying the law, and he was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1753, when he was only 19 years old. When he was elected to the first Continental Congress on behalf of Delaware, it looked as though his voice would be drowned out by two far more liberal delegates, Thomas McKean and Caesar Rodney. 2.
This is a pretty nifty story, to be sure. 3. 4. Annotated Constitution Prototype TOC. U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights (including the Preamble to the Bill of Rights) The Originalist Perspective. An excerpt from The Heritage Guide to the Constitution Written constitutionalism implies that those who make, interpret, and enforce the law ought to be guided by the meaning of the United States Constitution--the supreme law of the land--as it was originally written. This view came to be seriously eroded over the course of the last century with the rise of the theory of the Constitution as a "living document" with no fixed meaning, subject to changing interpretations according to the spirit of the times. In 1985, Attorney General Edwin Meese III delivered a series of speeches challenging the then-dominant view of constitutional jurisprudence and calling for judges to embrace a "jurisprudence of original intention.
" There ensued a vigorous debate in the academy, as well as in the popular press, and in Congress itself over the prospect of an "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution. As is often the case, the debate was not completely black and white. David F.