The U.S. Constitution should be interpreted as a living document.

Unfortunately, he has made a number of significant historical oversights that doom his argument. To begin with, Con attempted to explain that the Constitution was so short at the time of its ratification because it simply didn’t grant much power to the federal government. Unfortunately, history proves this argument is completely backwards. The very first sentence of Federalist Paper # 1 makes clear why the country needed to adopt a new Constitution: the “unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government” under the Articles of Confederation (AOC). [1] Under the AOC, the federal government had no power to raise revenues, no power to regulate commerce, and no power to enforce its authority over the states. The whole purpose of enacting a new Constitution was to save the country from devolving into anarchy through the creation of a stronger national government. As Hamilton wrote in Fed. Paper #26:“The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community. ” (emphasis added)[2]Con cites the text of the 10th Amendment to support his interpretation that “the powers of the United States government are ONLY those listed in the Constitution. ” This is also false. The 10th Amendment merely reserves “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” to the states; it does not reserve “every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not . . . expressly delegated to the United States,” as Article II of the AOC did. [3] In a unanimous 1819 decision which recognized the existence of implied government powers, the Supreme Court recognized the importance of this rhetorical disparity:“The men who drew and adopted [the 10th Amendment] had experienced the embarrassments resulting from the insertion of [the word “expressly”] in the [AOC], and probably omitted it to avoid those embarrassments. A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. ” [4]As that case made emphatically clear, the Constitution was always intended as a concise grant of broad government powers. Next, Con invokes two quotes from Madison and Jefferson to “disprove that the writers of the constitution meant for the Constitution to be a living document. ” Both quotes are of dubious value in ascertaining the true intent of the framers. Con’s Madison quote concerning the General Welfare clause was - and still remains - a minority opinion on the scope of that provision. Like most of the Federalist delegates at Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton interpreted the phrase “general welfare” as a broad grant of plenary spending power to Congress. [5] Hamilton’s position was endorsed by President George Washington, and - since the scope of that clause was first addressed by the Supreme Court in 1937 [6]- has never been questioned by a single Supreme Court Justice. Jefferson’s 1801 quote on Constitutional interpretation has even less value. To begin with, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t even in North American when the Constitution was written or ratified. More importantly, however, was the fact that Jefferson’s approval of the Louisiana Purchase as President in 1803 illustrates perfectly the value of a living Constitution. As a strict constructionist, Jefferson had significant doubts that he possessed the constitutional authority to acquire so much territory without an explicit constitutional amendment, but feared that waiting for the passage of a new amendment would lose him the opportunity to make the deal. His doubts notwithstanding, Jefferson made deal, telling one correspondent that “the less that is said about the constitutional difficulties, the better. ” [7]Jefferson, however, shouldn't have anguished himself over the decision. Had he simply adopted a moderately expansive view about the scope of a President's treatymaking power under an evolving Constitution (as his own Treasury Secretary suggested) [8], he wouldn't have embarrassed himself by looking like such a hypocrite. Then again, the slaveowning author of the Declaration of Independence was certainly no stranger to hypocrisy. Speaking of race, my opponent dismisses the value of Brown v. Board of Education as evidence for why a Living Constitution is so important because the constitutional phrase it turned upon happened to come from an Amendment to the original Constitution. To be blunt, this is simply an innane argument. When the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, nobody from that era contemplated that the Equal Protection Clause would someday be used to eradicate racial segregation. As the Supreme Court noted in its now-infamous 1896 decision to uphold segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, Northern schools were segregated at the time of the Amendment's passage. [8] While the 14th Amendment was being debated on the Senate floor, even the viewing galleries above were racially segregated. [9] Thus, if the Equal Protection Clause had been interpreted faithful to its framer's original intent, Brown v. Board would have been decided differently. In fact, given the unlikelihood that enough Southern states would have ever voted to ratify a new Amendment explicitly abolishing racial segregation, it is possible that we would still live in a segregated society today under an "original understanding" of the 14 Amendment. This is an inescapable conclusion that my opponent has completely dodged. I would humbly submit that both the Lousiana Purchase and the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education were two of the best historical events to ever happen to the United States. Does my opponent disagree? Both would have never been possible under a more regressive interpretation the Constitution. Briefly, here are some other constitutional developments that could not have happened without a Living Constitution:1. The "incorporation" of the Bill of Rights against state governments. [10] After all, the 1st Amendment only says "Congress shall pass no law. . . " (emphasis added).2. Abolition of the death penalty against juveniles [11] or the mentally handicapped. [12]3. The right to interracial marriage. [13]4. The right to use birth control. [14]5. The right to be free from warrantless police searches. [15]Unless my opponent can demonstrate that the framers would have originally endorsed any of the outcomes listed above, he must at least concede that a Living Constitution has been beneficial to our country from a consequentialist perspective. I maintain that a Living Constitution is both legally and morally desireable. Sources: [1] . http://thomas.loc.gov...[2] . http://thomas.loc.gov...[3] . http://avalon.law.yale.edu... (emphasis added)[4] McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U. S. 316, 406 (1819)[5] . http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu...[6] United States v. Butler, 217 U. S. 1 (1936)[7] David Meyer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson 230 (1994)[8] Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 544 (1896)[9] David Strauss, The Living Constitution 12 (2010)[10] Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 (1925)[11] Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551 (2005)[12] Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304 (2002) [13] Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967)[14] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965)[15] Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10 (1948)