Unitedstates Preamble

The Preamble serves solely as an introduction, and does not assign powers to the federal government,[1] nor does it provide specific limitations on government action. Due to the Preamble's limited nature, no court has ever used it as a decisive factor in case adjudication,[2] except as regards frivolous litigation.[3]

Judicial relevance

The courts have shown interest in any clues they can find in the Preamble regarding the Constitution's meaning.[4] Courts have developed several techniques for interpreting the meaning of statutes and these are also used to interpret the Constitution.[5] As a result, the courts have said that interpretive techniques that focus on the exact text of a document[6] should be used in interpreting the meaning of the Constitution, so the Preamble provides additional language against which to compare other parts of the Constitution. Balanced against these techniques are those that focus more attention on broader efforts to discern the meaning of the document from more than just the wording;[7] the Preamble is also useful for these efforts to identify the "spirit" of the Constitution.

Additionally, when interpreting a legal document, courts are usually interested in understanding the document as its authors did and their motivations for creating it;[8] as a result, the courts have cited the Preamble for evidence of the history, intent and meaning of the Constitution as it was understood by the Founders.[9] Although revolutionary in some ways, the Constitution maintained many common law concepts (such as habeas corpus, trial by jury, and sovereign immunity),[10] and courts deem that the Founders' perceptions of the legal system that the Constitution created (i.e., the interaction between what it changed and what it kept from the British legal system[11]) are uniquely important because of the authority "the People" invested them with to create it.[12] Along with evidence of the understandings of the men who debated and drafted the...