In a celebrated case[1] decided a few years ago the Supreme Court of the
United States said:

The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning
does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now.
Being a grant of powers to a government its language is
general, and as changes come in social and political life it
embraces in its grasp all new conditions which are within the
scope of the powers in terms conferred. In other words, while
the powers granted do not change, they apply from generation
to generation to all things to which they are in their nature
applicable. This in no manner abridges the fact of its
changeless nature and meaning. Those things which are within
its grants of power, as those grants were understood when
made, are still within them, and those things not within them
remain still excluded....

To determine the extent of the grants of power we must,
therefore, place ourselves in the position of the men who
framed and adopted the Constitution, and inquire what they
must have understood to be the meaning and scope of those
grants.

[Footnote 1: _South Carolina v. United States_, 199 U.S., 437.]

Thus speaks the voice whose word is law.

Viewed in the sense intended--as the formulation of a legal rule for the
interpretation and construction of a written instrument--the statement