Does the preamble to the Constitution carry legal weight, or not?

[Syrinx]

The ascending Republican-led Congress plans to make a big show of reciting the words to the United States Constitution, presumably to stress the overwhelming importance of the tenth amendment to said document, and its implied demand for the federal government to be as "small" as possible.

To refresh your memory, the tenth amendment reads as follows:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Republicans and conservatives and teabaggers cite this as proof that the federal government shouldn't do anything to help citizens get health-care, food, education, or much of anything at all.

But couldn't that very same amendment be cited to disallow foreign wars of aggression? Or federal laws against the possession of marijuana, or any other drug, for example?

They don't really seem to remember the original preamble to the Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

You know, I find that stuff really appealing.

I would like our leaders to strive for a more perfect Union.

I would like to establish Justice. That would be great.

I would like to insure domestic Tranquility. (Do Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh share that wish?)

I would like to provide for the common defence. (I want to defend America, without offending the rest of the world.)

I would like to promote the general Welfare. (And that includes room and board.)

And I would like to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

I really, really would.

Somehow, I doubt the Republicans agree. I don't know where I got that idea. :shrug:

(And it's hard to find Dems that will stand up and fight for those values. Even most of them are corpo-bots these days.)

Happy New Year Democratic Underground. :hi:

[eridani]

1. My interpretation of the 10th amendment is that rights are anything that

--THE PEOPLE say they are.

[PurityOfEssence]

2. Philosophically, it is the mission statement of the government; the rest is mere mechanism

Let's get really clear on this: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are completely different documents with completely different intentions. The former is a position paper at a time of strife to state that its adherents consider themselves separate, and it claims the moral right to do so. Sadly, some godstuff snuck its way in there, but that's to be expected at a time of extreme crisis, and it never pretended to be a blueprint for a working government, merely a statement of purpose.

The Constitution states in its preamble what the country is meant to be about; it's the moral, ethical and spiritual self-definition of the government-to-be. Frankly, the body of the document is merely the mechanics of how to make this work in a practical system; the body of the document doesn't address right or wrong, good or bad or really anything of the sort. For that, one needs to look at the preamble. The states did, and this wasn't enough, so they spat it back and there was an emergency. From that came the Bill of Rights, which lays out more premises of our proposed society.

There ARE some rules in the body of the document that more than hint at the kind of fair-play desired, and Article 1 section 9 is a real corker for the bully-boys if they want to take a good look at it, but truly, the heart and soul of what is intended by the rules created for administering a government lie in the preamble itself. It is truly the wellspring from which all legislation should flow, and by which all legislation is justified.

It's first, it's the flat-out definition of what We the People intend to provide for ourselves, each other and those who follow, so yes, it not only has weight, it truly IS the Constitution in a spiritual sense.

The Preamble is the science; the body is the engineering. The Preamble is the spirituality; the body is the church. The Preamble is the melody; the body is the orchestration. The Preamble is the soul.

[WinkyDink]

8. And to finish: Most importantly, the body is.....the body. Concrete. Observable.

[Hugabear]

3. Silly. The Constitution means whatever the Teabaggers says it means

After all, they're the ones walking around with pocket-sized copies of the Constitution. Doesn't matter that they've never actually read it all the way through, that as soon as they read the Preamble, they'd throw it away as some "liberal garbage".

[FreakinDJ]

4. Short answer - Yes

Yes - a litigator can argue the preamble clearly defines the founding father's intentions when they wrote the constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

But Bastardizing the Constitution the same way some Religious Leaders Bastardize the Bible will run into a lot of opposition. Most Theological Scholars and the Clergy of the major religions ridicule the New Literal Interpretation of the Bible because it is basically "Dumpster Diving through the Bible" picking out little pieces they want to observe and leaving out the rest.

Once you sign on to the Constitution you have to buy the whole document and not just little catch phases you wish to take out of context

[Historic NY]

5. Think they will read all the court cases that shored up the Constitution.

[Confusious]

6. The preamble has no legal weight

But the courts have upheld the right of the government to do those things under the commerce clause.

[WinkyDink]

7. No. "In order to" precedes a statement of intention, not a statement of law, which the Founders

(AKA, authors) delineated with "shall" and "shall not."

[jmowreader]

9. It doesn't need to have legal weight...

The first clause in Section 8 covers everything that's in the preamble.

[david13]

10. Legal weight with whom? And anything can be interpreted in many

different ways, particularly to suit political agendas.
dc