>At the same time continuing power of final interpretation through argument and vote is given to the judicial branch.<
j g, do you recall the Dred-Scott Decision? This was a decision by the US Supreme Court, which declared that yes indeedy, slaves are legal property of their owners, and people harboring runaway slaves could and should be prosecuted.
But Abraham Lincoln had his own view of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Specifically, Lincoln held that when the Declaration said "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these being Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", it meant all men. Therefore, in capacity as President of the country and the head of the Executive Branch, he rightly took it upon himself to take a contrary view of the Constitution from that of the Judicial Branch, and so issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves to be free people.
I firmly believe in the rightness of the legality of Lincoln's action, in defying the Supreme Court, when he believed they were interpreting the Constitution wrongly. And his predecessors to the office also felt that they also had authority to interpret the Constitution, and they also felt that the Congress had authority to interpret the Constitution. Obviously they had to be able to interpret the Constitution and other founding documents, because they were making laws which could not and should not run contrary to those documents. It is a three-branched government with divided powers, but all three branches had the authority to interpret the Constitution. |
