The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States and believed to be the most powerful judicial body on Earth. It derives its power from the Constitution, and is incredibly important to society, as it has helped to shape our country's laws. Many other courts around the world have modeled their judicial system after ours. The public trusts the nine justices to remain impartial on issues, and preserve the legitimacy of the Constitution by ruling on cases based on what our Founding Fathers wanted for our country.
While learning about this, a question arose in my mind. Should we still look to the Founding Fathers to uphold our democracy? Should we read their words as literally as possible? Or should we strive to maintain the ideals they believed in? The ideals of forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing liberty, freedom, and justice for all. As influential as they are to shaping our country, and the modern world in general, should the Founding Fathers still have an impact on how we make laws? The last Founding Father to die, James Madison, passed away in 1836, nearly two hundred years ago. Society has changed so much in this time, could the Founding Fathers even imagine the world we are living in now? It would be impossible for them to prepare for every single scenario.
Now I am not calling for the entire Constitution or Supreme Court to be thrown out and changed. Far from it. The ideas of innovators such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were far ahead of their time, and these men should be immortalized for their accomplishments. I believe the system as it stands is in a good spot, I just question looking to these men, who lived during the 1700s, to guide over how we live in the year 2020. The world was much different back then. In order to continue to make advances as a species, we need to adapt to our current standing, and not take the exact words of a document written in a much different era as law. If we do not continue to improve upon our current problems, our progress will stagnate. Evolution is the survival of the fittest. Those individuals who overcome challenges and grow from them will be the most successful. I think this belief holds true for our country as a whole.
One case study for this would be the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment grants us the right to "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed". Certainly, this amendment was of importance during the time period. We were just coming out of a brutal war. People who felt they were being wronged by their government rose up to fight the tyrannical British Empire. This amendment was put in place so that people could feel safe, and it ensured to the people in charge that if they made laws that infringed on people's rights, the populace could fight back.
But looking at the amendment in a modern-day perspective is much different. There have been significant advances in weapon technology. In the 1770s, the weapon of the time was a flintlock musket. The reload time was anywhere from 15-30 seconds for each bullet. A rifleman needed to manually go through all of the steps to reload, including pouring gunpowder down the barrel of the gun. At peak efficiency, a rifle could be shot anywhere from 2-4 times a minute. After two hundred years filled with war, and billions of dollars poured into warfare innovation, a typical rifle now can fire as high as 150 rounds a minute. These weapons have been designed to kill many people as efficiently and effectively as possible. The rise of gun violence in the United States poses the question: Should the Second Amendment be updated? Could our Founding Fathers have anticipated these types of advancements? What would be their opinions be if they were here now? The United States by far has more gun violence than the rest of the world, and I believe that while the Second Amendment is important, we should look at it from a 21st-century lens. Certain weapons, such as the AR-15, which is used in many mass shootings, should have stricter rules on who can acquire it, and when/where it can be used. I certainly believe that Americans should have access to protection in the form of guns, but there should be a strict training process and screening period, in order to ensure only good people have access to them, and they understand the damage that can be caused.
This is why looking at the Constitution, and the Supreme Court's rulings, through the eyes of our Founding Fathers can be dangerous in certain cases. The laws have not changed, and because of that, there were more mass shootings than days of the year in 2019. Fortunately, Article V of the Constitution addresses this issue. The most forward-thinking piece of the Constitution, Article V allows Congress to amend the Constitution. Since then, the Constitution has been amended a total of twenty-seven times.
It is my belief that we need to view the Constitution as a living, breathing document that should be updated based on the IDEALS of the Founding Fathers, and less on the exact wording of what was written in 1787. The Founding Fathers provided an amazing framework for how our democracy should be run, now it is up to the Supreme Court to validate their document, and update it to modern standards. The Supreme Court should strive to uphold the Constitution in order to advance the United States, and all of humankind, in the most efficient but fair way possible.
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