Teach the First Amendment and Constitution Day. Constitution Society Home Page. 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.