In How Not to Read the Constitution, by Laurence Tribe and Michael Dorf, they imply that the constitution shouldn't be read by what is written. When Jefferson and others first proposed the constitution, they were writing it for the specific situation that they were in. It was established to bring balance between government power and accomplish individual liberty. The authors believe that as readers of the constitution, one must look beyond the general views of Jefferson and closer to the fine details of it. The constitution is written so broadly, that there is so much room for imagination from the reader. The reader may perceive what they believe the constitution says but is not always correct. Tribe and Dork describe the constitution as being inconsistent. Even at that, it is still very interpretive, since the United States has been around for over two hundred years with the same document.
I would have to say that I strongly agree with the statements of Tribe and Dork. I think that people perceive what they want to perceive. If the constitution is written so broadly and so general, then the people will interpret the meanings in different ways. The authors use two amendments to describe the overall broadness of the constitution. The eighth amendment describes cruel and unusual punishment, yet it does not give examples of cruel and unusual punishment, so it is up to the reader to determine what is cruel and unusual and what is not. The other amendment described was the fourteenth. The fourteenth amendment describes the privileges and immunities of citizens, but gives no list of privileges or immunities. I"d say that's pretty general. An upper-class person could consider something not a privilege, while a middle-class person could consider the same thing to be a privilege. It all depends on who is reading the constitution and how they perceive it while reading it. Maybe it was intended by Jefferson to make such a general constitution so that the enforcers of the future would be able to interpret the constitution in regards to themselves.
