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United States Constitution
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The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. The Constitution, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government, Articles Four, Five and Six entrench concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments and of the states in relationship to the federal government. Article Seven establishes the procedure used by the thirteen States to ratify it. In general, the first ten amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, offer specific protections of individual liberty, the majority of the seventeen later amendments expand individual civil rights protections. Others address issues related to federal authority or modify government processes and procedures, Amendments to the United States Constitution, unlike ones made to many constitutions worldwide, are appended to the document. All four pages of the original U. S, according to the United States Senate, The Constitutions first three words—We the People—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. From September 5,1774 to March 1,1781, the Continental Congress functioned as the government of the United States. The process of selecting the delegates for the First and Second Continental Congresses underscores the revolutionary role of the people of the colonies in establishing a governing body. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the first constitution of the United States and it was drafted by the Second Continental Congress from mid-1776 through late-1777, and ratification by all 13 states was completed by early 1781. Under the Articles of Confederation, the governments power was quite limited. The Confederation Congress could make decisions, but lacked enforcement powers, implementation of most decisions, including modifications to the Articles, required unanimous approval of all thirteen state legislatures. The Continental Congress could print money but the currency was worthless, Congress could borrow money, but couldnt pay it back. No state paid all their U. S. taxes, some paid nothing, some few paid an amount equal to interest on the national debt owed to their citizens, but no more. No interest was paid on debt owed foreign governments, by 1786, the United States would default on outstanding debts as their dates came due. Internationally, the Articles of Confederation did little to enhance the United States ability to defend its sovereignty, most of the troops in the 625-man United States Army were deployed facing – but not threatening – British forts on American soil. They had not been paid, some were deserting and others threatening mutiny, spain closed New Orleans to American commerce, U. S. officials protested, but to no effect. Barbary pirates began seizing American ships of commerce, the Treasury had no funds to pay their ransom, if any military crisis required action, the Congress had no credit or taxing power to finance a response. Domestically, the Articles of Confederation was failing to bring unity to the sentiments and interests of the various states
2.
Article One of the United States Constitution
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Article One of the United States Constitution establishes the legislative branch of the federal government, the United States Congress. The Congress is a legislature consisting of a House of Representatives. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, Section 1 is a vesting clause that bestows federal legislative power exclusively to Congress. Similar clauses are found in Articles II and III, the former confers executive power upon the President alone, and the latter grants judicial power solely to the federal judiciary. These three articles create a separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government and this separation of powers, by which each department may exercise only its own constitutional powers and no others, is fundamental to the idea of a limited government accountable to the people. The separation of powers principle is particularly noteworthy in regard to the Congress, the Constitution declares that the Congress may exercise only those legislative powers herein granted within Article I. It also, by implied extension, prohibits Congress from delegating its authority to either of the other branches of government. That the power assigned to each branch must remain with that branch, although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, Congress has also long asserted the power to investigate and the power to compel cooperation with an investigation. The Supreme Court has affirmed these powers as an implication of Congresss power to legislate, since the power to investigate is an aspect of Congresss power to legislate, it is as broad as Congresss powers to legislate. However, it is limited to inquiries that are in aid of the legislative function. The courts are highly deferential to Congresss exercise of its investigation powers, Congress has the power to investigate that which it could regulate, and the courts have interpreted Congresss regulatory powers broadly since the Great Depression. Section Two provides for the election of the House of Representatives every second year, since Representatives are to be chosen. At the time of its creation, the Constitution did not explicitly give citizens an inherent right to vote, rather, it provided that those qualified to vote in elections for the largest chamber of a states legislature may vote in Congressional elections. Since the Civil War, several amendments have been enacted that have curbed the states broad powers to set voter qualification standards. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, the Nineteenth Amendment prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on sex. The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibits the revocation of voting due to the non-payment of a poll tax. The Twenty-sixth Amendment prohibits the denial of the right of US citizens, eighteen years of age or older, in the 1960s, the Supreme Court started to view voting as a fundamental right covered by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is no requirement that a Representative reside within the district in which he or she represents, although this is usually the case, there have been occasional exceptions
3.
Article Two of the United States Constitution
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Article Two of the United States Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government, which carries out and enforces federal laws. It includes the President, the Vice President, the Cabinet, executive departments, independent agencies, and other boards, commissions, the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. Similar clauses are found in Article I and Article III, the former bestows federal legislative power exclusively to Congress, and the latter grants judicial power solely to the Supreme Court. These three articles create a separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government, the Presidents executive power is subject to two important limitations. First, the President lacks executive authority explicitly granted to Congress, hence the President cannot declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, or regulate commerce, even though executives had often wielded such authority in the past. In these instances, Congress retained portions of the power that the Continental Congress had wielded under the Articles of Confederation. Nor were they retained by the U. S. Congress as leftovers from the Articles of Confederation, government considers itself at war with a foreign political entity. By U. S. law, the limitation on that power is a requirement to notify specific members of Congress within 48 hours after the beginning of military operations. Once proper legal notification is given to the members of Congress, military action can continue. Second, specific constitutional provisions may check customary executive authority, notwithstanding his executive power, the President cannot make treaties or appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate. Likewise, the Presidents pardon power is limited to offenses against the United States and does not extend to impeachments or violations of state law. As treaties are by U. S. law official agreements with foreign governments recognized as only after Senate ratification. Additionally, since official treaties are specifically created under and by constitutional U. S. S. as far as presidential appointments, as with treaties a person is not officially and legally appointed to a position until their appointment is approved by the Senate. And again, the President nominates people for positions at his pleasure. Senate consent occurs when a supermajority of votes to approve. The head of the Executive Branch is the President, although also named in this first clause, the Vice President is not constitutionally vested with any executive power. Nonetheless, the Constitution dictates that the President and Vice President are to be elected at the time, for the same term. The framers intent was to preserve the independence of the branch should the person who was Vice President succeed to the duties of the presidency
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Article Three of the United States Constitution
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Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the federal government. The judicial branch comprises the Supreme Court of the United States, the judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The number of justices is fixed by statute at nine, the one chief justice, proposals to divide the Supreme Court into separate panels have been made, but all have failed. Since all such proposals have failed, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of such a division, however, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote, the Constitution does not appear to authorize two or more Supreme Courts functioning in effect as separate courts. The Supreme Court is the federal court that is explicitly mandated by the Constitution. During the Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made for the Supreme Court to be the federal court. This proposal was rejected in favor of the provision that exists today, under this provision, the Congress may create inferior courts under both Article III, Section 1, and Article I, Section 8. The Article III courts, which are known as constitutional courts, were first created by the Judiciary Act of 1789. Article I courts, which are known as legislative courts, consist of regulatory agencies. Article III courts are the ones with judicial power. However, cases not requiring judicial determination may come before Article I courts, other cases, such as bankruptcy cases, have been held not to involve judicial determination, and may therefore go before Article I courts. Similarly, several courts in the District of Columbia, which is under the jurisdiction of the Congress, are Article I courts rather than Article III courts. This article was expressly extended to the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico by the U. S. Congress through Federal Law 89-571,80 Stat,764, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. This transformed the article IV United States territorial court in Puerto Rico, created in 1900, Supreme Court for every sitting member over the age of 70½, up to a maximum of six. The Constitution is silent when it comes to judges of courts which have been abolished, the Judiciary Act of 1801 increased the number of courts to permit the Federalist President John Adams to appoint a number of Federalist judges before Thomas Jefferson took office. When Jefferson became President, the Congress abolished several of these courts, Judicial code of 1911 abolished circuit riding and transferred the circuit courts authority and jurisdiction to the district courts. The Constitution provides that judges shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, the term good behavior is interpreted to mean that judges may serve for the remainder of their lives, although they may resign or retire voluntarily. A judge may also be removed by impeachment and conviction by congressional vote, Three other judges, Mark W. Delahay, George W. English, and Samuel B
5.
Article Five of the United States Constitution
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Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process whereby the Constitution, the nations frame of government, may be altered. Altering the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments and subsequent ratification, the vote of each state carries equal weight, regardless of a states population or length of time in the Union. Additionally, Article V temporarily shielded certain clauses in Article I from being amended and it also shields the first clause of Article I, Section 3, which provides for equal representation of the states in the Senate, from being amended, though not absolutely. Thirty-three amendments to the United States Constitution have been approved by the Congress, twenty-seven of these amendments have been ratified and are now part of the Constitution. The first ten amendments were adopted and ratified simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights, six amendments adopted by Congress and sent to the states have not been ratified by the required number of states and are not part of the Constitution. Four of these amendments are still open and pending, one is closed and has failed by its own terms. All totaled, approximately 11,539 measures to amend the Constitution have been proposed in Congress since 1789, Article V provides two methods for amending the nations frame of government. The first method authorizes Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, to propose Constitutional amendments, the second method requires Congress, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, to call a convention for proposing amendments. When the 1st Congress considered a series of amendments, it was suggested that the two houses first adopt a resolution indicating that they deemed amendments necessary. Instead, both the House and the Senate proceeded directly to consideration of a joint resolution, thereby implying that both bodies deemed amendments to be necessary. Also, when proposed by James Madison, the amendments were designed to be interwoven into the relevant sections of the original document. Instead, they were approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification as supplemental additions appended to it, both these precedents have been followed ever since. Regarding the amendment process crafted during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Madison,43, wrote, It guards equally against that extreme facility which would render the Constitution too mutable, and that extreme difficulty which might perpetuate its discovered faults. It moreover equally enables the General and the State Governments to originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side, each time the amendment process has been initiated since 1789, the first method has been used. All 33 amendments submitted to the states for ratification originated in the Congress, three times in the 20th century, concerted efforts were undertaken by proponents of particular amendments to secure the number of applications necessary to summon an Article V Convention. Once approved by Congress, the joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment does not require Presidential approval before it out to the states. Thus the president has no function in the process. In Hollingsworth v. Virginia, the Supreme Court affirmed that it is not necessary to place constitutional amendments before the President for approval or veto
6.
United States Bill of Rights
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The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the oftentimes bitter 1787–88 battle over ratification of the U. S, on June 8,1789, Representative James Madison introduced nine amendments to the constitution in the House of Representatives. Among his recommendations Madison proposed opening up the Constitution and inserting specific rights limiting the power of Congress in Article One, Seven of these limitations would become part of the ten ratified Bill of Rights amendments. Contrary to Madisons original proposal that the articles be incorporated into the body of the Constitution. Articles Three through Twelve were ratified as additions to the Constitution on December 15,1791, Article Two became part of the Constitution on May 5,1992, as the Twenty-seventh Amendment. Article One is technically still pending before the states, the door for their application upon state governments was opened in the 1860s, following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the early 20th century both federal and state courts have used the Fourteenth Amendment to apply portions of the Bill of Rights to state, the process is known as incorporation. There are several original engrossed copies of the Bill of Rights still in existence, One of these is on permanent public display at the National Archives in Washington, D. C. However, the government that operated under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to adequately regulate the various conflicts that arose between the states. The Philadelphia Convention set out to correct weaknesses of the Articles that had been apparent even before the American Revolutionary War had been successfully concluded, the convention took place from May 14 to September 17,1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The convention convened in the Pennsylvania State House, and George Washington of Virginia was unanimously elected as president of the convention, the 55 delegates who drafted the Constitution are among the men known as the Founding Fathers of the new nation. Thomas Jefferson, who was Minister to France during the convention, Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the convention. However, the motion was defeated by a vote of the state delegations after only a brief discussion. Madison, then an opponent of a Bill of Rights, later explained the vote by calling the bills of rights parchment barriers that offered only an illusion of protection against tyranny. The quick rejection of this motion, however, later endangered the entire ratification process, thirty-nine delegates signed the finalized Constitution. Thirteen delegates left before it was completed, and three who remained at the convention until the end refused to sign it, Mason, Gerry, elbridge Gerry wrote the most popular Anti-Federalist tract, Hon. Mr. Gerrys Objections, which went through 46 printings, the essay particularly focused on the lack of a bill of rights in the proposed constitution, many were concerned that a strong national government was a threat to individual rights and that the president would become a king. Jefferson wrote to Madison advocating a Bill of Rights, Half a loaf is better than no bread, if we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can
