ain historical considerations are essential. The words are to be understood by those for whom they were written, and therefore we must know what those understandings where. Christopher Wolfe believes that the framers would tend to give preferences in such cases to the fair reading of the document itself.To summarize, the approach to constitutional interpretation employed in the early years of American government: an interpreter is to begin with the words of the document in their ordinary popular usage and understand the in light of their context. That context includes the words of the provision of which it is a part, but also extends to the much broader context of the document as a whole. The deeper assumption underlying these early rules of interpretation was a fairly traditional realist epistemology: that the constitution has a fixed, determinate meaning intelligible to those who give it a fair reading. Under modern assumption, a constitution is unavoidably made up or created by interpreters, to a greater of lesser extent, as they go along. The framers of the constitution, on the contrary, looked at the constitution as an intelligible fixed standard that made possible a republican rule of law, rather than of men.Literalism - Historical Historical literalists believe that the contemporary writings of the Framers are not relevant to any interpretation of the Constitution. The only thing one needs to interpret the Constitution is a literal reading of the words contained therein, with an expert knowledge in the 18th century meaning of those words. The debates leading to the final draft are not relevant, the Federalist Papers are not relevant - only the words.The historical literalist takes a similar look at the Constitution as an originalist does, but the literalist has no interest in expanding beyond the text for answers to questions. Forexample, an historical literalist will see the militia of the 2nd Amendment as referring to all...
