Modalities The five modalities of constitutional interpretation that we have discussed in class are natural law, doctrinal/precedent, textualism/plain meaning, prudentialism/common sense, and historical/original intent. Of these five, the three I have chosen to evaluate are textualism, historicalism (a proxy term used in order to unify the modalities, or “ism’s,” used in this paper) or original intent, and prudentialism. I intend to prove that prudentialism will serve as the best single …showed first 75 words of 1520 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1520 total…interpretation, however, we must look at how law is actually interpreted, and consider if it is better to be rooted in just one of the modalities listed here rather than a mix of any number of them. There are rare cases when a trial will go through the courts today without being processed by several of these modalities. The narrow-mindedness of picking a single mode limits the amount of progress possible when trying a case.