Founding Fathers Research Paper

Zach Blazer
Final Speech
May 22, 2013
Thesis Finale The Founding Fathers of the United States created a masterpiece. They were able to create a government held together by a Constitution that was run by the people, and was also able to keep the government in check by building a system that was able to change with time. The Founding Fathers were able to pull this off because they understood that human nature has not changed through history, and that people will look to tear down others in order to bring themselves more power. Because of this they needed a system that would limit the government, but also give them enough power to maintain peace within a nation. They achieved this goal, or at least came very close to it, through the Amendment
A loose interpretation would be to interpret the Amendments in such a way that they no longer mean what the Founding Fathers originally meant, and also in order to force them into being relevant in a topic that they were never meant for. On the other hand, a strict interpretation of the Constitution is one that takes the Amendments for exactly what they say, and takes into account the limitations of what the Founding Fathers could have meant for them, and does not go beyond the bounds of those limitations. An example to display the difference between the two rulings, is the Jones v. United States case. A brief summary of the case is that Jones was a drug dealer, and the FBI had placed tracking devices on his car without warrants. When they finally gathered enough evidence to arrest him, they brought him before a court, and it was undetermined since no evidence gained without a warrant, or proper procedure, could be used against him. Because there was no proper evidence against him, he was brought to the Supreme Court, and they ruled him innocent, on account of the fact that the evidence was gained without proper procedure. The significance of this case was not that he went free, but how the court had ruled that he should go free. The Justices split up into mainly two different ways of ruling the case. One side went with a strict interpretation to make their ruling and one side followed a loose interpretation. The two sides were written by the judges Scalia, and Alito. Scalia took a strict interpretation, and argued that the search was without a warrant, and by going off of the exact meaning of the word search, concluded that the evidence could not be used since it was illegitimate. Alito position was specifically, that the original, trespass-based meaning of search under the Fourth Amendment did not apply to electronic situations like the one that