Really now? It's fatuous to believe that the Founding Fathers all agreed on exactly what they meant and how the Constitution would apply.i understand what you are saying but shouldn't we operate word for word what the constitution says!! our forefathers worded it perfectly! it seems like everyone wants to twist and misshape everything to their way of doing things when it should be as written!!
The reality was that although fifty-five delegates attended the Constitutional Convention in 1786-87, only thirty-nine signed the proposed Constitution. Thirteen left early without signing, and three refused to sign. There was then a bitter fight over ratification by the States. And it indeed looked like the Constitution would fail ratification until the Massachusetts Compromise was hashed out -- giving us the Bill of Rights after the Constitution was ratified without the Bill of Rights.
The Founding Fathers well understood how people do disagree and how politics works. They were active, mostly successfully, in the commercial and political world of the time. Many were lawyers. A few were judges. Almost all were very well educated. They were generally politically savvy. Many were members at various times of their home colonial assemblies or were otherwise active in local government or administration. They were solidly grounded in the real world and knew how to make things work in the real world. That is why they were able to bring our nation into being.
And since they had their share of disagreements among themselves, in the Constitution they assigned the judicial power of the United States to the federal courts -- which included, as specifically stated in the Constitution, deciding cases arising under the Constitution. And so the Founding Fathers gave us the federal courts to decide disagreements about what the Constitution means and how it applies in connection with matters in dispute. That is what courts do, and have done since long before the founding of our Republic.
So while you might think you know what the Constitution means and how it applies, others have disagreed, and will continue to disagree. As I noted above, in post 41, Hylton v. United States, in 1796 when the ink was barely dry on the shiny, new Constitution, appears to be the first major litigation involving a question of the interpretation and application of the Constitution.