Thread: How should we deal with the ambiguous nature of the Constitution when it comes to rights?

How should we deal with the ambiguous nature of the Constitution when it comes to rights? In the case of the right to privacy, how much privacy do Americans have a right to? What other rights besides privacy might be ambiguous?

The intent of the constitution was to enforce individual rights. Whenever there is a conflict, the rights of the individual should come first and foremost.

Every State has a separate Constitution and its own Bill of Rights. States have the power to create more rights for their citizens within their borders.

However, federal power is usually not restricted by grants of rights by the State constitutions, so this power of State Constitutions is limited somewhat.

First off, I think the States should amend their constitutions to give more rights to their citizens. Once people get used to having more rights expressly in their State constitutions, and then they see how the Federal government infringes on those rights through interpretations of the Federal Constitution by our current U.S. Supreme Court, people will be more amenable to amend the Federal Constitution to give more express rights to individuals as against the power of the Federal Government.

First, you need to understand that the Constitution does not GRANT any rights, but defines what the role of government is. If you read it, you will see that the language clearly states the rights have always been there, and that the government cannot take them away."Congress shall make no law...""...shall not be infringed.""...shall not be violated..."
And so on.

These phrases do not establish any rights. They state that the government cannot take them away.

Why are many things so ambiguous? Because there is no way they could list every single detail needed. The Constitution would be bigger than the new healthcare bill, and that was over 2000 pages. They also knew that if they did list all the details, that it would be outdated as soon as it was written. Instead, things that were written over 200 years ago can still apply in today's world.

This does not mean that I believe the meaning of the Constitution should change as the times change. But the wording on it and the intend need to be taken into account, and it is the job of the judges to try to speculate on what the original authors of the Constitution (or the amendments that came after) would apply it in today's world. For example, the 14th Amendment makes everyone born in the US a US citizen. It was intended as a way to deal with all the former slaves after the civil war. They became citizens and the southern states could not deny this to them. But, in today's world, there are no one alive that was a former slave during that time period. But how would the writers apply it to other situation? How would they apply it to children born to illegal immigrants in the US?

There is a process to amend the Constitution if something becomes way outdated, and should not apply any longer. It is very rare occurrence, though, to amend it, and a very difficult process. It has only been done 17 times since it was originally ratified (there are 27 amendments, but the first 10 were ratified at the same time as the rest of the Constitution). It's made to be difficult for a reason: The original writers did not want it modified on a whim every few weeks.