Citizens Interpret the Constitution

The Framers believed deeply in the necessity of a written constitution, so that all citizens would know exactly the powers, duties, and limits of government, as well as know their own rights as American citizens. Just as the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, citizens arrive at their own understanding of the Constitution's meaning. Important constitutional changes in American life sometimes occur when citizens' understanding of the Constitution changes. For example, in the mid-nineteenth century, a growing number of Americans came to believe that slavery was wrong, and that it ought not to be permitted any longer under the U.S. Constitution. This growing antislavery sentiment contributed greatly to the outbreak of the Civil War, and to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which outlawed slavery, protected free black Americans' rights, and gave black men the right to vote. Similarly, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, advocates of women's suffrage worked for decades to give American women the right to vote, a right guaranteed by the Nineteenth Amendment (1919).

More recently, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s led to the end of legalized racial segregation. The civil rights movement also inspired other groups of Americans, including feminists, gays and lesbians, and the handicapped, to seek equality under American law. Also in recent decades, many Americans have become very concerned about the right to privacy, a right not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, but a right that many Americans believe is vital to their liberty. In many ways, then, American citizens interpret the Constitution for themselves, and important changes in our Constitution sometimes come from citizens' changing attitudes, as well as from the Supreme Court or Congress. So, Constitutional changes can come from the "bottom- up," as well as the "top-down." Americans rightly view the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence as the charters of their liberty, and they place tremendous faith and hopes in these documents.