Our whole nation and the world are focused upon the saga of our 2000 election for President. At the time in which I am writing, the matter has not yet been resolved. Currently the two campaigns are in the midst of legal battles that have engaged the Florida and United States Supreme Courts. A ruling by the liberal Florida Supreme Court has many representatives of Bush and Gore talking about how our Federal and State Constitutions should be interpreted. As I observe their discussion, I see many parallels between interpretive philosophies of these legal documents and the hermeneutical approaches to the Bible, especially Bible prophecy.

In a much talked about decision by the Florida Supreme Court, they handed down a decision favoring Gore that had no basis in Florida constitutional law. Instead, the Court adopted a belief that every vote should be counted as an abstract principle from which they made their ruling. This set off a swirl of explanations from both sides as to their interpretive approaches.

The traditional and historic approach to interpreting our constitutions are to handle them as literary documents that make specific statements which become the guidelines for deciding contemporary legal issues. Within this approach a judge may look to other sources to enrich their depth of understanding of the legal document. For example, The Federalist Papers, are a collection of essays written by the writers of the U. S. Constitution explaining further the intended meaning in our governing document. Within this approach, the role for the judiciary is to interpret the law, not to make up, and thus, legislate new law. The legislation of new law was to be done by congress and sign by the President. "Strict Constructionalism" is the label often assigned to the traditional interpretation of our constitutions. It was thought to be the only way to interpret a legal document until about one hundred years ago.

A new way arose for looking at a constitution called "judicial activism." Justices like Oliver Windell Holmes pioneered this approach. This approach is grounded upon the belief that there are no such thing as universal absolutes that are true from generation to generation. Thus, the need for judges to update a constitution through the use of sociological input for each generation. This leads to judges making decisions that are not based upon past law or precedent, but creating out of thin air a decision that then becomes legally binding. This is what the Florida Supreme Court recently did. Even if there were no such thing as universal absolutes (of course, there are because the God of the Bible says so), this would not justify judicial activism, since the legislature should still be the governmental branch to "update" the constitution and laws of the land. This method of interpretation is not really a method of interpretation. Instead, it is a way in which these judges can legislate from the bench. It is a way to bypass the legislative process and impose upon society their values through law. The most infamous example in our lifetime was the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized the murder of infants in their mother