I know of 8 approaches to interpreting the U.S. Constitution (and its amendments). None is obviously correct; some are more popular than others, but all are, in some unsatisfying sense, an arbitrary choice we could make:

(1) What the authors believed their words were literally saying (for instance, by studying what is known about how James Madison interpreted his writing). Because that tells us what the documents were intended to say.

(2) What the authors were trying to achieve on behalf of our country by writing those words (for instance, by studying what is known about why Alexander Hamilton thought certain things should be in the Constitution). Because this takes into account the spirit, rather than just the letter, of the law.

(3) What did the ratifiers / those who voted to approve the amendments interpret the words as meaning? Because that takes into account the reasons why the documents were actually accepted as law.

(4) What those who first enforced each of the different terms of these documents interpreted them to mean. Because that tells us what the documents first actually meant in practice.

(5) What decisions in our courts most recently interpreted the words to mean? Because that represents the current theoretical state of the law (even though it sometimes changes). There are, of course, good reasons to think we should implement the law as court decisions indicate. What I’m referring to here is something different, namely, when one says that the “correct” interpretations of the Constitution are automatically what the courts have most recently decided they are.

(6) What most people today would interpret the words to mean, if the words are taken at their face value in modern English. Because this is what those words actually mean to us when we read them.

(7) Whichever method of interpretation listed above causes an interpretation most like what we wish the documents said, accompanied by us then arguing that this is always the correct approach to interpretation. This one is especially popular.

(8) Decide what we think the Constitution should have said, then try to find some interpretation of the words that at least sort of makes it sound like it’s saying those things.

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It would be nice if the Constitution told us which of these methods to use to interpret its pages (though I imagine we’d end up just debating what THOSE words mean too).

It would be even better if we could decide which of these methods would actually produce better outcomes for our society. That’s unfortunately very hard to do.

To some extent, the choice for how to interpret the Constitution hinges on how much we value stability of interpretation (which makes the law more understandable and consistent) vs. achieving certain outcomes we desire (e.g., making sure there are strong protections for things that society feels should be protected). But this dichotomy is not sufficient to allow us to choose between all the different interpretative methods, in my opinion.

Usually, we either seem to treat the Constitution as though it is not ambiguous (a theory that’s unfortunately been falsified) or as though one of these approaches is the “right” way to do it, as though there could be such a thing as one “right” way to interpret an ambiguous document.

This piece was first written on March 20, 2018, and first appeared on my website on September 4, 2025.

I pointed out why this claim is impossible. As warm water cools it must eventually reach the same temperature that the cool water started at. From that point on, the warm water will behave just like the cool water, but it will have taken the warm water a while to even get into that state. Freezing occurs at the same temperature for both warm and cold water, but warm water of course will take longer to get to that temperature.

This isn’t quite 1+1=2, it’s more like 23+14=37. I double checked my answer and was 98% confident. It’s amazing what some people will believe, and how powerful reasoning is at solving these sorts of problems.

But I was wrong. And not just a little bit. In fact there are tons of ways that warm water might be able to freeze faster. This is the so-called Mpemba effect, observed by the likes of Aristotle, Descartes, and Francis Bacon.

The fact that the water has previously been warmed contributes to its freezing quickly: for so it cools sooner. Hence many people, when they want to cool hot water quickly, begin by putting it in the sun.

-Aristotle

My wrongness here isn’t so much about being wrong about the effect, per se. The extent to which this effect is real, and under exactly what conditions, can reasonably be debated. My wrongness is in being convinced I was right when I couldn’t have known I was. I couldn’t possibly have ruled out all the possibilities in a single minute. For example, I didn’t even consider these ideas that came up after two minutes of googling:

• Evaporation : the warm water evaporates, meaning there is less water to freeze.
• Frost: the cool water may be more likely to freeze from the top (with the frost trapping in further heat) whereas the warm water may be more likely to freeze from the bottom and sides.
• Convection: warm water and cold water produce different currents, which could alter the heat distribution.
• Supercooling: if free of impurities and in the right conditions, water can actually drop below freezing temperature without freezing, and the propensity for supercooling might be affected by the starting temperature.
• Conductivity: the hotter liquid might melt an existing layer of frost that is preventing the liquid from directly touching a much colder surface.

What could have prevented me from making such a ridiculous error? How could I have noticed that I was being insanely overconfident? There are a few signs that should have tipped me off:

• Lack of expertise: The physics of heat and fluids is outside of my domain of expertise. I should have recognized that this is not a subject I know a lot about and so been more skeptical of my own opinions.
• A simple model: I was employing a very simple model for the situation (involving just the temperature of the water). While beautiful, and easy to work with, really simple models rarely capture all the details of a situation. For instance, I didn’t consider the possibility of evaporation or frost, because those variables weren’t included in my model. If you’re using a simple model, you should consider whether you’re missing important factors.
• Insufficient time: If you haven’t thought about something for very long yet you are already very opinionated, you might want to think about it longer.
• Didn’t consider alternatives:  I didn’t even try to think of ways that this effect could be real. Instead, I came up with an argument why it couldn’t be real, and that argument sounded convincing to me, so I stopped thinking. This problem is the big one. So here’s a 30 minute free mini-course I designed to train you to avoid exactly this problem.

Reasoning is only as good as the reasoner. And we humans don’t have the best track record. The trouble is, it’s easy to find arguments that seem totally convincing. The trick is that we shouldn’t just try to convince ourselves that we are right. We should try to convince ourselves that we are wrong. If we do that in earnest, we’ll be much more likely to end up with the right opinion.

*Ice photograph by Dingske.