Direct Taxes and the Founders’ Originalism (Robert G. Natelson, 8/29/24, Law & Liberty)
The Founding-era interpretive rule most relevant to the Constitution is this: When construing a document, the primary goal is to discern the intent of the makers. This rule applied to nearly all documents—real estate conveyances largely excepted. Of course, the identity of the “makers” varied according to the nature of the document. Of a will, the maker was the testator; of a contract, the contracting parties; of a statute, the legislators; and of a constitution, the ratifiers. As James Madison wrote, the sense of the legitimate Constitution is “the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation.” One whose only role is as a drafter—whether the scrivener of a will, a lawyer in the legislative counsel’s office, or a constitutional framer—did not qualify as a maker.
Construing a document by discerning the intent of the makers is a very old practice. This antiquity may come as a surprise to those who think originalism has just “been around for several decades” or that it is merely a white supremacist scam. But it is incontrovertible.
it’s why the amendments can not be absolute: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”