a

Civil Rights and Liberties

Final Exam

Spring 2020 (Coronamester)

Savannah State University

Please answer the following question as fully and completely as you can before the due date. Remember that this is being treated as an essay, which will be turned in online and filtered through Turnitin.com, so please don’t plagiarize. That is essentially the only way that I will not be able to help you with your grade on this exam. Do your best, and I can work with you. Use someone else’s work, and you will not fare well.

We have spent a considerable amount of time this semester talking about various types of constitutional issues through the lens of Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court has a battle that they wage with each other over the meaning of the Constitution, and how the Constitution should be interpreted. The two broad options over how to read the Constitution are: 1) Strict constructionism, in which the rights we have as Americans are defined narrowly, based on the text and the history (originalism) of the Constitution; and 2) Living Constitutionalism, in which the rights we have grow and evolve with the changing society, even though the text of the Constitution doesn’t change (so, the meaning of the Constitution changes as society changes). Given the framework for the debate, how do the cases that we have discussed this semester reflect (1) and (2)? Give examples of decisions that are rooted in strict constructionism and living constitutionalism and show how they are rooted in one of those views. Conclude by making a case for one view over the other. Which view is the superior way to understand the Constitution and why?