Textualism's definition is the most obvious of the chosen three: to go by exactly what the text (law) says. More simply, textualists follow the constitution down to the "letter of the law," and allow for no more than minute interpretation in order to associate the law in evaluation with the case at hand. One of the strengths of textualism is that the question of whether a law can or cannot be applied to a case is simply answered. Either the law states that the type of case being heard is able to come under scrutiny of that law or it does not, and textualists will not spend any considerable amount of

Out of these three, prudentialism tends to win out the general mindshare of the public. Most people believe that any interpretation should be based on what is morally correct, or going with what "makes sense" when you evaluate the problem. Common sense is a valuable asset to the American people. If one does not use common sense in everyday life, that person is considered as an outsider, hence, illustrating the importance of this quality. This is indeed the best single method for constitutional 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.

time deciding this. Textualism consists of mostly black and white; there is very rarely any gray area to deal with, which greatly reduces the amount of argument available to the other modalities. For example, our readings included the fictional case of the Speluncean Explorers, in which Justice Keen based his arguments on the facts presented in the case and how they related to N.C.S.A. (N.S.) S 12-A ("Whoever shall willfully take the life of another shall be punished by death."). Using textualism as a defense or offense has very strong possibilities; such as disallowing the other modalities the ability to refute or misinterpret what is strictly stated in the written law. An example of this ability would be the case of the State of California v. Kevin Mitnick. Textualists were able to keep Mr. Mitnick in prison for three years without a trial and two more years after the trial with a rather fierce punishment for something that never actually caused any damage. They were able to find laws that kept him in jail for having a list of credit card numbers, and other oddities that were discovered after his computer equipment was wrongly confiscated. None of those numbers proved to have been used unlawfully, but Mr. Mitnick remained in jail. Another unforeseen twist in Mitnick's case was that the "evidence" found on his computer was used in the court. This is illegal consideri

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1558
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)