of the colonial governments, the Continental Congress, the Articles of Confederation, and all the hopes and dreams of those early colonialists and forged and instrument based on individual freedom that is so vague and nebulous, yet so dynamic and flexible, it often is referred to as a living thing(Rupert, 2). This poetic license can be a great benefit to modern society. The living document theory is an idea which is popularly supported by both political parties. This fact holds a lot of weight, because it is very rare to have such bipartisan agreement. Even in Tribe and Dorfs essay, they state that The belief that we must look beyond the specific views of the Framers to apply the Constitution to contemporary problems is not necessarily a liberal position. Indeed, not even the most conservative justices today believe in a jurisprudence of original intent that looks only to the Framers unenacted views about particular institutions or practices. (Tribe, 49). The vagueness of the original Constitution brings up a few issues concerning the legitimacy of the literal reading of the Constitution as it relates to modern times. Since the Constitution was written at a time so different and so distant from our own time, we have no way of truly knowing what the original understanding of the document was. The meetings that were held to write the Constitution were not well documented, so the discussions that went on between the framers are not known. This information would greatly aid in knowing the original understanding. Besides the generic realm of the original understanding of the Constitution, there are many specific issues which Tribe and Dorf point out in their article. [The Constitutions] Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment, but gives no examples of permissible or impermissible punishments. Article IV requires that [t]he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of ...
