ABSTRACT
Under Article III of the Constitution, the Court’s jurisdiction is limited primarily to interpreting treaties, federal statutes, and constitutional provisions, including the Bill of Rights.1 When interpreting an article, clause, or amendment in the Constitution, such as
the Presentment Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court should first consider the text and ascribe to it a meaning that the words can reasonably support. In addition, the Court considers the original purpose(s) of a particular provision at the time it was drafted to ensure that its decision is consistent with such purpose(s). This may include, for example, an analysis of the historical record in Congress that led to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, the Court considers prior case law and, pursuant to the doctrine of stare decisis, typically adheres to its decisions for the purpose of promoting stability and predictability in the law. All three sources of legal authority – the text, its purpose(s), and precedent – function to constrain the Court from issuing decisions based on the Justices’ personal values. In essence, the Court’s duty is to say what the law is, not what it should be. When the Court disregards this duty, such as through manipulating the Constitution’s text to invalidate a law banning contraception or creating a substantive right to privacy that is not inferable from the text, it abuses its Article III reviewing power and infringes on citizens’ right to decide such issues democratically.
