Supreme Court's Role in Interpreting US Constitution: American Law - Prof. Domiguez Vila, Apuntes de Derecho Constitucional

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CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

IN THE UNITED STATES

SECOND EDITION

ROBERT A. SEDLER

Wolters Kluwer

Law & Business

Chapter 2. Constitutional Interpretadon: The Role of the Supreme

Court

14. Not only is the Constitution over 200 years oíd and deliberately made very difficult to amend, but many of its provisions are very general and broadly phrased. This is particularly true of the major provisions protecting individual rights against governmental action, such as the First Amendmenl's guarantee of freedom of speech and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of due process of law and equal protection of the laws. It has become the function of the Supreme Court in the American constitutíonal system to define the meaning of the Constitution and to interpret and apply its provisions. Judicial review of the constitutionality of laws and other governmental action has existed in the United States ever since the Supreme Court's seminal 1803 decisión of Marbury v. Madison. 13 That case "declared the basic principie that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principie has ever since been respected by this Court and the Country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our consti- tutional system." 14

75. What this means operationally is that the primary source of American con- stitutional law is the interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court. While the text of the Constitution is the starting point for such interpretation, it is pre- cisely because so many provisions of the Constitution are general and broadly phrased that the actual meaning of those provisions depends on how they have been interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court. 15 As a practica! matter then, "Ameri- can Constitutional law" will be found in the decisions of the Supreme Court inter- preting and applying the Constitution. 16
76. 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
77. Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S.l, 18 (1957).
78. It is a matter of considerable academic debate in the United States and to a degree among the Mem- bers of Court itself as to how the Court should proceed in interpreting the Constitution. Much of this debate has revolved around how much weight the Court should give to the purported "intention of the Framers" as to the meaning of a particular constitulional provisión and around whether it is "legitímate" for the Court to engage in what has been called "Constitutional policymaking." In prac- tice, however, the Court's Constitutional interpretaron goes far beyond merely ascertaining the pur- ported "intention of the Framers," and there can be no doubt that the Court does in fact engage in "Constitutional policy-making." On the subject generally, sce Sedler, "The Legitimacy Debate in Constitutional Adjudication: An Assessment and a Different Perspective," 44 Ohio State L.J. 93 (1983).
79. Tríese decisions are reponed in the United States Reports, an official publication of the Supreme Court itself, and in two major unofficial publications, The Supreme Court Repórter, published by West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, and United States Supreme Court Reports, Law- yers' Edition, published by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, Rochester, New York.