All these comments and your only message is "wah wah wah, I don't like something the Supreme Court decided and I think I should get to decide how the Constitution applies for everyone in the entire country! wah wah wah."

1.) The Supreme Court has never done that nor has it done anything like that - that's why our society keeps accepting its decisions.

2.) What's fucking stupid is that in like 50 comments the only "solution" you've been able to propose to your imagined problem is that all of society accept your interpretation of the Constitution, as if you should be our un-elected dictator. Sorry, the rest of us just don't have any respect for you, let alone want you to be the one who gets to decide for the rest of us what the Constitution means. We'll let the Supreme Court keep doing that, thank you very much.

You can say whatever you want. But you're wrong to think that you, and not the Supreme Court, should get to pick the definitions used for reading the Constitution. And you're absolutely wacky if you think the rest of us are going to go along with what a blowhard like you says as opposed to what the Supreme Court says.

Does repeating "wah wah, I should get to define what the Constitution says, not the Supreme Court, listen to me! listen to me!" make you feel good?

Well, nobody's going to care what you say the Constitution says anyway. And nobody should.

Again, you're being dishonest. I never said you should be happy about anything. I said that our society has for more than 200 years agreed that the Supreme Court gets to define the words in the Constitution for the purpose of using the Constitution, not you. So far, your only response is "but I want to define the words in the Constitution because I think I know what they mean better than the Supreme Court!!!!" But you haven't even once attempted to explain why you think anyone else would accept your definitions rather than accepting the Supreme Court's definitions.

And if you think each individual should get to define the words in the Constitution for themself, you haven't explained how we'll ever be able to resolve any legal dispute with each person picking their own definitions as they choose.

Honestly I think you've come to understand that your point of view is stupid but you don't want to admit (to yourself, I don't care and you don't know me anyway), that you've been stupid, so you just keep flailing here.

What's intellectually dishonest is for you to resort to straw men arguments like the idea that the Supreme Court would decide that "crimes" means "bunnies." But I think you knew that.

Again, I did not argue that words have no meaning, and I already said that words have the meaning humans assign them. Sometimes that meaning comes from common use (although still not as defined by you), but for many specific documents a specific entity chooses the definitions. That's true of academic, legal, scientific, and other documents. In the case of the Constitution, our society has for more than 200 years assigned the Supreme Court the authority to pick the definitions that apply for the words in the Constitution.

Now, I have no doubt you'll continue to reject that - and likely respond in bad faith once again, because this notion challenges your personal yet deeply held notion that you, of all people, know what the words in the Constitution mean and should be able to define them for all of society, even though the bulk of our society has for 200 years agreed that the Supreme Court gets to define those words.

But I encourage you to consider how we would possibly have a meaningful Constitution if everyone, in every Court battle, was allowed to say "I believe that, according to the definitions I think we should use, the Constitution means _________."

So you're arguing in bad faith. Kudos to you, you wasted time on the internet today, learned nothing even when provided the opportunity, didn't rethink any previously held but ill-founded stances, and looked like an idiot to anyone who bothered to read what you wrote (all 3 of them, perhaps).

You're kinda useless, huh?

Again, why do you think you are the one who gets to decide the meaning of the words in our Constitution? For more than 200 years, our society has agreed that the Supreme Court is the body that decides the meaning of the words in our Constitution. They don't decide the words that go in the Constitution, but they do decide what they mean. And then our laws have to abide by the meaning they pick.

Again, given that we've let them decide the meaning of the words in the Constitution for more than 200 years, why do you think we should instead let you decide?

Edited to add, since you've misscharacterized or missunderstood me. Words have the meanings that humans assign them. They do not have independent objective meanings. In common usage, their meaning is decided by, well, common usage - and then somewhat codified by dictionary authors. But for lots of specific uses - scientific, legal, academic, etc., it is normal to define key terms - i.e. to say "for the purpose of this document, x, y, and z words will be defined as meaning _____, _____, and ____, as opposed to their common usage.

As a society, we have for more than 200 years agreed that the words in the Constitution are not to be assigned definitions based on each individual's perception of their common usage (which changes over time and differs from region to region and person to person), but instead that the Supreme Court will determine the meaning of the words and combination of words in the Constitution.

Perhaps you understand that and you're arguing in bad faith. Perhaps you don't. I don't know.

When you say "words have meaning" and then try to say what is meant by the Constitution, you're implicitly claiming for yourself the ability to decide for everyone what the Constitution means. But you're not the person or entity that our society has empowered to decide what the Constitution means. The Supreme Court is.

Surely though you can also understand that if everyone says "whatever I say is what the Constitution 'says'" then it's pretty useless to even talk about what the Constitution says. It's only useful because there is a singular body that gets to decide how the Constitution applies to our society.

I'm saying you can say X, the Supreme Court can say Y - neither of you can dictate what the other (or anyone else) believes - but what the Supreme Court says matters a ton for the laws that affect this land and what you believe matters not at all.

I imagine that you'll immediately dismiss me as evil, or, more condescendingly, as "uninformed" - but the reason I support long prison sentences - life without parole, in fact - for crimes like murder or rape - is not to rehabilitate, it's to prevent those people from ever murdering or raping another innocent person. As long as they never leave prison, everyone outside of prison is safe from them. And for me, that's the critical thing, to keep society safe from proven murderers and rapists.

After that overwhelming priority, I also feel it is morally obligatory that people who murder or rape suffer for what they did. If someone purposefully takes or ruins a life (via rape), then it is morally wrong for them to have a decent life after that. I imagine you disagree - I suggest reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Junko_Furuta

And then tell me if you still think that rapists and murderers deserve to live a happy life ever again after what they did.

I also don't believe that it's worth spending a dime rehabilitating serious criminals - the odds of success are too low and society can better spend its attention on fixing the problems that lead some people to become criminals (not all people, of course, and not all criminals either - some people are incredibly evil without environmental influence).

Finally, the evidence I've read suggests that deterrence does in fact work, albeit not as much as I'd like. But that comes last in my order of priorities.

In our system, like it or not, the Supreme Court is the final say on what the Constitution says. Not you.