Original intent and other constitutional questions

Original intent.

It’s what judges are told seek out to settle tricky constitutional questions.

Want to know what the founders really meant about our right to free speech, to bear arms, or to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure when they ratified the U.S. Constitution in the summer of 1788? It’s easy, find that original intent.

Conservatives are big on original intent. As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said of judges, according to his conception of original intent, their only job should be “to call balls and strikes.”

Of course, the Constitution has a lot to say about many things. It specifies what the separate but equal roles of Congress, the Chief Executive (president) and the Judicial branches are, and what they can and can’t do. The usage of “pre