constitutional construction
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 282 U.S. 716 - United States v. Sprague · 1931Most cited · 204 citing opinions
plain meaning rule
The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition
How often courts cite the case defining “constitutional construction”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “constitutional construction” — 207 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.