A University of Florida student won an academic honor after he argued in a school paper that the Constitution applies only to white people. The student also made statements against Jews.
The granting of the award set off months of turmoil on the law school campus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/us/white-supremacist-university-of-florida-paper.html
@chicken Even if that’s what the language could be proven to mean, it would be legally irrelevant. What was true in 1789 is not immutably binding on future generations. The entirely of US law is endlessly amendable. What the Framers may have intended in 1789 does not bind future Americans to their meaning and intent, where the law has been modified since. The Framers surely also rejected women’s suffrage, but so what?
The constitution can be formally amended, as it has been to guarantee rights regardless of sex and race (which the author of the OP paper seems to discount for unknown reasons). I don’t really like the idea of it meaning whatever judges prefer it to mean though, since that leads to shit like the perpetually expanding authority of the office of the president, in a way that is hardly democratic. The meaning should come from something that doesn’t change, except when a democratic process makes an explicit choice to change it.
In practice afaik that sort of thing can be legally relevant: https://govfacts.org/explainer/original-intent-vs-textualism-how-judges-read-the-constitution/