"Intent does not matter. What matters in what is written. To try to interpret the intent and override the words of the law is judicial activism."
Dear OmahaFields: lets both take a breath and see if we can analyze, together, what you have written.
Please allow me to address the second sentence first.
You write; "What matters(is)what is written."
Are you aware that many of the words that are 'written' -- that you have written for that matter -- may enjoy a totally different or even OPPOSITE meaning in a generation or two?
Many of the words that we use today already HAVE changed in meaning -- as enumerated above. So, you see, we need to know more than just 'the words that are written'. We Need to be able to put the words in the CONTEXT of time and place.
Now lets look at the first sentence.
You write: "Intent does not matter."
Well, it mattered to the founding fathers whom thought it was important enough to enumerate their INTENT in the FIRST PARAGRAPH of the Constitution, as follows:
"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
So I rest my case on the fact that the founding fathers thought enough about the importance of INTENT; to posit the Intent of the Constitution: at the very beginning of the greatest legal document ever written.
Why do you suppose they did that if 'INTENT does not matter in the law?
Of course it matters.
Is it everything? No it it isn't.
You write: "To try to interpret the intent and override the words of the law..."
No, I am arguing that INTENT matters. Not that intent alone -- especially if the intent is nebulous -- should 'override the words of the law...'
But I would say that those that would say intent does not at all matter are the real Constitutional revisionist.
So, my friend, you are correct when you say "what matters is what is writtin"... and I have used(in context)'what was written' in the United States Constitution, by the founding fathers, to show that intent(in the law) does, indeed, matter.
It certainly mattered to them!
Please give me YOUR interpretation of the following:
'A person, whether licensed or not, shall not operate a vehicle upon a highway or other place open to the general public or generally accessible to motor vehicles, including an area designated for the parking of vehicles, within this state if the person has in his or her body any amount of a controlled substance listed in schedule 1 under section 7212 of the public health code"
If it mattered, they would have put in the right to ride a horse.