 Among the ways in which one might be able to determine that constitutional authors did not intend, or would not have wished to endorse, a particular concrete application or result suggested by the original public understanding of a constitutional provision is by appeal to the general goals or purposes we have reason to believe they intended to achieve in enacting what they did. Sometimes these goals and purposes, often called further intentions, are explicitly expressed in the preamble to a constitution, as is often true in the case of ordinary statutes. But such statements of purpose in constitutions tend to be very broad and highly abstract and are often of very limited use in dealing with the more specific questions that arise under particular constitutional  provisions.[20]  So appeal is sometimes made to official (and nonofficial) debates and discussions surrounding the drafting, adoption or ratification of the constitution or of the particular provision in question. Sometimes appeal is even made to widely shared beliefs at the time on the relevant issue. It’s virtually certain that hanging, for example, was widely held in eighteenth-century America to be a quick and relatively humane form of execution. Thus one might have very good historical reason to believe that it could not have been among the intentions of the Eighth Amendment’s drafters to ban such a practice. An originalist interpretation of that Amendment might draw support from this fact in an argument purporting to demonstrate the constitutional validity of hanging.