War of words: for more than 200 years, Americans have revered the Constitution. So why can't we agree on what it means?

• Author: Liptak, Adam

The Constitution is a brisk little document, a mere 8,000 words, including its 27 Amendments. You can read it in half an hour, and some of its language flows like poetry: "We the people of the United States," it starts, "in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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."

Judges and politicians have been reading the Constitution for more than 200 years. Yet the debate over how to interpret our founding document--the legal framework upon which American government and society is built--seems to get more divisive with each passing year.

It is the question at the heart of the fight over President Bush's appointments to the federal courts, sparking increasingly emotional debates in the Senate, which must confirm or reject the President's nominees. And all of that is just a warm-up for the real battle: filling the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court in more than a decade, following the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in July.

TWO SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

To follow the action in Washington, you need to understand the two broad schools of thought on how to interpret the Constitution: originalism (sometimes called strict constructionism) and the "living Constitution" school.

People who favor a "living Constitution" say that it is a special kind of legal document, purposefully studded by the Founding Fathers with ambiguities and meant to adapt to changing times and the changing views of the nation.

"The drafters were using general terms," says Mark V. Tushnet, a constitutional scholar at Georgetown University in Washington. "They weren't spelling it out, and they knew it. That was either because they wanted future generations to resolve it or because they couldn't agree."

Originalists, on the other hand, including President Bush, look to the meaning the Constitution had in 1789. It is, they believe, a legal document like any other--no different from a contract or a statute. Its words are plain and its meaning should not change over time, no matter what the views of a modern-day judge are.

Originalists say the idea of a "living Constitution" invites what they call "judicial activism" and "legislating from the bench"--judges creating rights that are not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution and getting...