has there ever been a change in interpretation for any part of the bill of rights?

by jd35

I understand the Judicial branch's responsibility of interpreting laws and also that the bill of rights has never been changed by any newer amendments, but have any of the amendments in the bill of rights been interpreted differently than before?

Edit: grammar and clarity (hopefully)

HomeAliveIn45

Yes, interpretation of the first ten Amendments has very steadily changed over time in many fundamental ways. For example, the Bill of Rights only applied against the action of the federal government until the onset of the incorporation doctrine over the last hundred or so years. This meant that, for most of US history, any state level government could establish a state religion, unless the establishment clause of the First amendment was also included in that state's constitution in some form or another. The Vicinage Clause, which gives an accused person the "right to a jury selected from residents of the state and district where the crime occurred" has not been incorporated, and interestingly the Second Amendment was only incorporated in 2010. Incorporation and many other interpretive/doctrinal changes have derived from the passage and subsequent jurisprudence of other amendments, most notably the Fourteenth.

Outside of that fundamental point, much of today's constitutional interpretation comes from a long list of 20th c. landmark cases. One example would be NY Times v Sullivan (1964), which formalized modern interpretation of the First Amendment's free press clause vis-à-vis defamation and libel standards. Before, there was no clear standard which covered what precisely could be censored and what could be published by the press. By comparison, courts in the 19th century generally tended to support the claims of those libeled over the rights of the press.