If it is no guideline then please explain to me how SCOTUS rules.......indeed it is a guideline and scotus interperates on a case by case basis with the constitution AND stari decisis (SP?)germain to the case. Care to disagree with that statement?
THE SUPREME COURT AND OUR CONSTITUTION
The Constitution of the United States is a contract between the citizens of this country and their government. Like any contract, the terms within it are meant to be concrete and inflexible, unless the parties bound by its terms mutually agree to modify it at a later date. Nobody in their right mind would ever enter into a contract with another party if the terms of that agreement could be changed after the fact by a judge. The whole point of creating a contract is to show that there is a meeting of the minds between the parties who agree to abide by its terms, and whenever there is a dispute between those parties over some aspect of the contract once it's been entered into, a judge is charged with figuring out what the parties actually agreed to in the first place.
Initially the judge does this by reading the contract and considering the literal meaning of the words within it. If he should come across a passage that uses an ambiguous term like "excessive", he then must determine what the parties involved understood the term to mean when the contract was written. He can accomplish this task in several different ways, but what he should never do is simply make up a definition out of whole cloth. This, however, is exactly what activist judges do on a regular basis.
You see, ORIGINALIST judges attempt to figure out what the original intent of the people who created our most important contract was, so that the parties currently bound by it (aka the citizenry and the government) are dealt with fairly and reasonably. Activist judges, on the other hand, seek to change the terms of the original agreement and force upon everyone involved their own personal opinions of what that contract SHOULD say. This practice is grossly unfair, because it forces one of the parties to the contract (whichever one is ruled against at any given time) to accept terms that they did not agree to, and that is precisely why activists should never be allowed to preside over any court which deals with Constitutional issues.
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