The Preamble states the goal (the definition of success)
The body defines the method by which the goal is to be achieved
The amendments set limits on the method
The Preamble to the Constitution provides the mission statement of the United States. It contains the ultimate test for all attitudes of Politicians and for all actions of our Government.
The phrase “in order to” indicates that what follows defines the reasons for the founding of our nation:
form a more perfect union
establish justice
insure domestic tranquility
provide for the common defense
promote the general welfare
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity
These words were agreed to by all of the founders. These words provide the bar by which the three branches of Government are to be measured.
The preamble is too general to use as a measurement. For the same reason I don’t think it can be considered equal to the rest of the constitution. Even the more detailed parts of the body and the amendments (the amendments being things we have decided should have been in the body) are open to debate in how they should be interpreted.
Lets assume you are right. So what? The list is too general to provide any real policy limitation. No matter what policy outcome a person prefers they can argue that it is to promote the general welfare or establish justice or form a more perfect union or something.
Test of political ideals, perhaps. Test of government actions, no.
The test of government actions should be (1) are they included in the enumerated powers granted to the government? and (2) do they violate the rights/powers reserved to the people and states?
Actually the preamble is quite specific when compared to the generalities often quoted by politicians from the Declaration of Independence, various political ideologies and the Bible.
The country would be better served by our Representatives consulting the goals set by the founders.
Most Mission statements are vague. This one is not. It provides the correct frame of reference for evaluating our performance as a nation.
And nowhere near specific enough to actually run a country.
Read just the preamble.
Now answer these questions.
Do we have a single legislature or a dual legislature? Or maybe a triple legislature? How are the members of this legislature or legislatures chosen? Could we have a national legislature appointed by the state legislatures with no direct elections? Do we have a parliamentary legislature that can be removed at any time or one with fixed terms? Can the government redraw state boundaries to reflect population changes? Who’s our head of state? Do we have a single head of state or an executive committee? Is the head of state elected or appointed by the legislature? Or maybe a hereditary position? How long do the heads of state remain in power? A fixed term? A lifetime appointment? Until they’re fired? Who fires them? How does our court system work? Do we have a national court system? Do we have state court systems? Do we have a mixture of both? If it’s a mixture, which court system has authority over the other? Who appoints judges to the court? Elections? The legislature? The head of state? Other judges? Can the legislature enact any laws or are there things which are prohibited to legislative action? Can individual states negotiate treaties with other countries? With other states?
You’re going to have to answer every one of these questions and a whole lot more by the first day of your country’s existence. And the preamble answers none of them.
We don’t need to have recourse to the preamble to know whether the legislature should have one or two chambers, whether the states should have treaty-making powers, etc. All these things are explicitly addressed in the text that follows the Preamble. (The Amble, I suppose :-).) The goals or objects set out in the Preamble do not override or limit the Amble; rather, they provide a standard against which the workings of government can be measured or evaluated. So, the Amble provides for a legislature and confers on it powers to make laws, raise taxes, etc. And it provides for a President and confers various powers and functions on him. And so forth. We then (the suggestion is) have recourse to the Preamble to evaluation the exercise, or proposed exercise, of these functions. So, Congress has power to enact this Bill, but should it? We answer that question by asking whether the Bill will tend to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, etc.
I agree with what others have said. This might provide a framework for a political evaluation (As a legislator, should I vote for this Bill? As a voter, should I vote for a congressman who would vote for this Bill?) but it’s not something that can be legally enforced. First, because it’s too generic. And, secondly, on account of the separation of powers; whether this Bill is or is not apt to form a more perfect Union etc etc is a matter for the legislature to decide, not the courts.
What happens when two or more of those things are in conflict? Especially the last one. It will easily come into conflict with every other item listed, depending on your idea what “liberty” is.
As others have said, this is too general and there is a reason why the body of the Constitution needs to be more specific. And even then, while the document itself is only 4 pages long, we have thousands and thousands of pages of jurisprudence devoted to interpreting it.
With liberty comes responsibility. The other things don’t ‘come into conflict’ with ‘liberty’, so much as they are necessary for it. Freedom isn’t free. It requires that The People with the means help The People without, otherwise The People as a whole do not have liberty.
It sets out the goals of the founding of the nation. It explains the reasons for the sovereignty that we claimed from England. It demonstrates the principles that we desire to see in this experiment of self-governance.
The rest of it is specific guidelines and framework that they felt, at the time, were the best methods of achieving those aspirations, but they left it up to future generations to modify that framework to better fulfill the goals that they laid out for us.
It has no legal enforcement, but it is there to judge whether what is enforced lines up with those values. IMHO, we’re failing, and the FF’s would not appreciate how we have altered their vision.
I find the FF’s opinions to be interesting, but not necessarily informative about how we want to live today. IOW, I don’t really give even one shit, much less two, whether they would approve of what we are doing or not. They’ve all been dead for about 200 years. A good many of the were slaveholders, after all.
Only 38 of the 41 delegates at the Constitutional Convention voted in favor of it. So 7% opposed.
And only 5 states ratified it within that year. The other 7 refused to do so until the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10) were agreed to. It took 2 more years for that agreement. And the 13th state, Rhode Island, refused to go along until the others threatened to blockade it. Even then, the vote to ratify barely passed the Rhode Island Legislature.
So nearly 3 full years before all 13 states ratified it. Hardly “agreed to by all”.
Isn’t “a more perfect union,” a nation state with a single language, single culture? That would make genocide and racial/cultural purity sweeps an inherent requirement for the central government to conduct on a regular basis.
And is there more liberty with police to keep everyone from trampling each others imagined rights, or is there more liberty when it all depends on how powerful a private army you control?
Cheapest way to insure domestic tranquility: kill EVERYONE. Especially including your own relatives.
Now, I am sure that the OP intended only the more grand and gracious interpretation of the Preamble. It’s the same ideals that motivate lots of people to fixate on the words in the Declaration of independence, but it is every bit as wrong-headed. The goal of such people always seems to be to try to find a shortcut around the very complicated and difficult process of amending the Constitution itself. To make amendments unnecessary, by declaring that the clear intent of the so-called Founders, was this or that, and therefore we can ignore everything else, and just do “the right thing.”
But as can be seen from my and others’ suggested interpretations, the Preamble is DANGEROUSLY imprecise.