Active Liberty Model

Time changes all political socialization institutions, from the institution of marriage to the institution of crime. New factors become relevant while others fade away. Because our laws should reflect what we think about how the world around us should work, and that ideal keeps changing, the “active liberty” approach is the better way to interpret the Constitution of the United States. Citizen’s views on the effectiveness of government should affect how the government works, according to how the people see the ideal. Growing up as the son of a pastor made me critical of the bible, because it had laws that were not kept anymore, but were still pronounced in the Old Testament. Some of these include stoning for adultery, chopping off hands for …show more content…
They did this because they knew that they could not put every problem that this nation would face into their own perspective. This power that was given to Congress has been used on 27 different accounts, to create a more fair and just system in the United States. These include the amendments of desegregation, women’s suffrage, and prohibition (which was quickly repealed). Some of the social constructs that are norms today, ex: voting rights for all, would have been appalled by the founding fathers. “For example, after the late-ninteenth-century Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson, the case which permitted racial segregation was, in principle, “separate but equal,” it became apparent that segregation did not mean equality but mean disrespect for members of a minority race and led to a segregated society that was totally unequal.”(Breyer, 6) These ideas of even racial segregation, along with the abolition of such, would also never have gone through the founders minds. This is why this country needs a living document, because of the possibility of change in our laws and social values that even the government itself will not enforce. Without the ability to change, such a rigid structure would fall apart and be unusable, as it would lead to the inability to adapt in an ever changing society. Therefore the government needs to …show more content…
This is just like the problem of factions in government; factions cannot be prevented from being created, but the effects of factions can be controlled by splitting up the representation in government through many representatives. Subjectivity can be controlled in the judicial system through the appellate courts, which are able to overrule preceding rulings based off of the laws. Unfortunately, these are not always the best rulings, due to subjectivity in interpretations of laws, but eventually, the appeals will be made to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court makes decisions based off of its interpretations of the constitution, which holds everything together. Once again, we have the problem of subjectivity in interpretations, but the decisions that are made by the Supreme Court have no emphasis, unless they are enforced by the executive branch or the legislative branch, through the use of executive orders, bills becoming laws, or other means. Literalists say that there is no subjectivity when reading from the constitution literally, but there is still subjectivity stemming from ambiguous wording written into the Constitution and different interpretations of the same words. This conceals subjectivity from the old values from when the document was written (conservative viewpoint), where the “active liberty” perspective would allow values from our society today into the subjectivity and, hopefully, create precedent