Interpretation is the Key to How Liberals and Conservatives See the Constitution

I think I've found a big key to understanding how liberals on one hand, and conservatives on the other hand, interpret the Constitution. Conservatives call themselves "historicist interpreters," and liberals including President Obama call themselves "living interpreters." If you look at various historical periods and look at how texts (both written and spoken material) were interpreted, you'll find there are basically three interprettions and possibly a kind of fourth as a subset of the third one, in each era (although in some eras two types were adopted).

The first interpretation is called Author Interpretation. In this one, a person reads other works by the author, studies his or her life and reads anything written by the author about the text being studied.

The second interpretation is Text or Textual Interpretation, which deals solely with words and meanings within the text.

The third one is Reader Interpretation, which basically says that the other two don't really matter as the reader will bring his or her own biases, knowledge, etc. to the text. Linked to this one might be a fourth, Community Reader Interpretation, in which you look back to what members of your historical community think and feel. By communities it is meant groups you belong to--your ethnic/racial group, your family, your town/country, groups you are a member of like religious groups, political parties and social groups like Kiwanis, soccor Mother's club, etc.

Conservatives tend to adopt the Author's Interpretation when making sense of the Constitution, while liberals tend to adopt the Reader Interpretation, and at times the Community Reader Interpretation. So, conservatives will often invoke the thoughts and ideas (and even the religous ideas) of the men who wrote the Constitution while liberals bring it up today where the Reader is. They are calling themselves (their style is Reader Interpretation), Living Constitutionalists. On the other side, the conservatives are calling themselves Historicist Constutionalists.

Hope this helps.