US Constitution 101, page 1
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Dedication
To our departed fathers, who set this book in motion decades ago when they shared their admiration for the Constitution with us as children.
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever been curious about how a piece of legislature drafted over two centuries ago remains the law of the land? Are you wondering what makes the US Constitution so long-lasting (the oldest in the world)? Or do you ever think about how the Constitution impacts your life—from paying taxes to boarding a flight?
If so, US Constitution 101 is for you. Here you’ll learn, in clear, simple language, how this document that impacts every aspect of government was formed, how it operates, and how it impacts you. You’ll find entries that cover many topics, such as:
Which Founding Fathers played significant roles in creating the Constitution
Why the Supreme Court has the final word on what is constitutional
How the US Senate is different from the House of Representatives
Why teachers work for state governments rather than the federal government
Why the US Post Office has a monopoly on delivering mail
And more
In a democratic union, each member must understand their governing laws and history in order to understand their rights as citizens. That said, despite the Constitution’s impact and popularity, most US citizens know very little about it. According to a recent study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, most Americans can only name freedom of speech as a right protected by the First Amendment (there are four others), and a third of Americans can’t name all three branches of government.
Fortunately, US Constitution 101 will give you a thorough understanding of the Constitution, no matter how much you may or may not already know about it. This book first looks into the historical document’s story and philosophy (including the events of the Constitutional Convention and how the Constitution was approved). You’ll then get an explanation of how the Constitution protects the rights of Americans through its creation and maintenance of the three branches of the federal government—this includes how the federal government and state governments interact with each other. So, let’s begin our journey through the most important governing document in the American political system—a journey that begins with “We the People.”
Chapter 1 The Creation of the Constitution
To understand the Constitution, it’s important to first understand its story. The origins of the Constitution can be traced back thousands of years ago when groups of human beings agreed to live under a set of laws. The political systems of the classical civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome provided the modern world with models of popular government. The influence of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution can be seen throughout the Constitution’s articles, sections, and clauses.
Although Americans today generally think quite highly of the Constitution, it was never meant to be an ideal plan of government. It is the product of many compromises and controversies. The following chapter details the compromises and controversies that created the Constitution and provides a basic introduction to the principles of American constitutional government, the Constitution’s structure, and methods for interpreting its meaning.
WHAT IS A CONSTITUTION? Organizing and Limiting the Government
For over 230 years, the Constitution has provided a legal framework for the United States. The Constitution organizes a government that is limited in power and protects the rights of “We the People” of this country. Although the US Constitution is among the most famous and enduring governing documents in the world, it was not the first constitution ever created. The framers of the US Constitution knew of others who, over many centuries, constructed governments that were organized, limited in power, and protective of fundamental rights.
THE RULE OF LAW
John Adams once wrote that the idea of good government was based on “a government of laws and not of men.” This idea is summed up in the principle of the rule of law. When the rule of law prevails, the laws are posted and known to everyone, they are fairly enforced, and the people generally follow them. A society has a constitution when a system of laws is established and supported by institutions for making, enforcing, and judging the laws.
No one knows exactly when human beings first attempted to live under written laws, but the earliest-recorded written law was handed down by Hammurabi, a Babylonian king who ruled in Mesopotamia nearly four thousand years ago. Hammurabi’s Code is best remembered for its harsh punishments, with most crimes being punished by death or dismemberment. While Hammurabi played a role in establishing the rule of law, his code was handed down from above; the people had no part in their own governance.
GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE
The ancient Greeks demonstrated one of the earliest examples of people administering their own government and making their own laws. After several unsuccessful experiments with different forms of government, the people of the city-state of Athens established a form of government they called demokratia, which means “rule by the people.” Rather than seeing themselves as subjects who were ruled by a monarch, freeborn Athenian men considered themselves citizens who had a right to participate in their government. Citizens rotated through offices, with some being elected and others being appointed by lottery. Laws were made by popular assemblies, and lawbreakers were convicted by juries of their peers.
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
Popular sovereignty is the idea that the people are the ultimate power behind the government, and the laws are made and administered on their behalf. This is distinct from monarchies and dictatorships, in which the ruler holds sovereign power over the people, which the ruler may choose to share (in part) with them at the ruler’s discretion.
Although the Athenians were innovative in establishing a government of the people, their system of democracy did little to protect the rights of individuals. In a pure democracy, the majority rules, and there are no rights held by minorities or individuals at odds with the majority. For example, Athenians periodically held votes to “ostracize” citizens, a process that involved nothing more than over six thousand citizens gathering and each writing a name on a shard of pottery. The person whose name was written on the most shards was exiled from the city for ten years, with no reason required and no way for the ostracized citizen to make an appeal. In a more extreme case, an Athenian jury convicted Socrates—one of the preeminent philosophers of classical antiquity—for “corrupting the youth” and denying the gods of the state. Socrates was condemned to death for being a public nuisance, something that today would fall under the constitutional protections of free expression found in the First Amendment.
The Tyranny of the Majority
Typically, when Americans think of tyranny, they imagine an oppressive government ruled by a single corrupt individual, known as a tyrant. However, nineteenth-century political writers, such as Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill, pointed out that majorities are equally prone to violating the rights of individuals and minorities when there are no constitutional restrictions on their power.
LIMITING THE GOVERNMENT
Constitutional governments place legal limits on the power of government and government officials, as opposed to absolutist and totalitarian governments, which place no limits on a government’s authority. The most valuable thing about the US Constitution is that it places limits on the government’s power. The Constitution forms a contract between “We the People” and elected governing authorities, distinguishing between the powers held by the government and the rights held by the people. One of the most important parts of the US Constitution is the Bill of Rights, which spells out specific rights of the people, such as free speech, protection from unreasonable searches, and a trial by jury. The idea of a bill of rights was nothing new to the Founding Fathers; they drew the idea from England’s rich constitutional history.
Over five hundred years before the Constitutional Convention, King John (yes, the corrupt king from the Robin Hood legend) was engaged in a civil war with his barons. These barons were nobles who governed regions of King John’s England in a decentralized system of government known as feudalism. John had provoked the barons (nobles) and church leaders by taxing via royal decree instead of asking for consent to raise taxes beforehand. Then, in 1215, John met the barons and church leaders at Runnymede, where he signed the Magna Carta (Latin for “Great Charter”), in which he promised not to raise taxes without gaining the consent of an assembly of barons. The Magna Carta set limits on the monarch’s power in England, leading to a standing parliament with the authority to make laws. In 1689, William III and Mary II signed the English Bill of Rights, which cemented Parliament’s status as a standing lawmaking body and enumerated several rights of the people, including the right to petition and protection from excessive fines and bails.
Although the English have never formally adopted a written constitution, they provided a foundation for the US Constitution by passing a body of laws that limit the powers of governme
A FEDERAL REPUBLIC The States and the People
The United States was founded as a federal republic. A federal system of government divides sovereign powers between a shared federal government and separate state governments. In a republican form of government, the people are considered to be the sovereign authority, though they exercise that authority indirectly through elected representatives. The framers of the Constitution used both federalism and republicanism to create a limited government that would be responsive to the people.
OUT OF MANY
The story of the United States is preceded by the separate stories of thirteen British colonies, which were founded along the Atlantic Coast of North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first of these colonies, Virginia, was named after the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth I. The first settlement in Virginia was named Jamestown after Elizabeth’s successor, James I. Colonists flocked to Virginia in the hopes of expanding their fortunes by cultivating tobacco as a cash crop. Only a few years later, the Mayflower arrived in Massachusetts, carrying settlers who were fleeing from religious persecution in England. Prior to the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the tobacco farmers in Virginia and the shipbuilders in Massachusetts had very little direct contact with each other, as each of the thirteen colonies governed itself according to separate charters granted by the monarch. The French and Indian War and its aftermath provided the first major opportunities for cooperation among the colonies.
During the war, Benjamin Franklin published a political cartoon depicting a snake cut up into several pieces, with each piece symbolizing one of the colonies. Below the snake, Franklin gave his fellow colonists a dire warning: “Join, or Die.” The colonists did not heed Franklin’s warnings during the war, but they did cooperate after the British Parliament announced several new taxes (including the Stamp Act) that would be placed on the colonies to help pay for the war. Colonists from Massachusetts to the Carolinas united to protest against “taxation without representation,” believing that Parliament had deprived them of their rights to consent to taxation through their own colonial legislatures. The British then responded by sending additional troops to the colonies, resulting in clashes between colonists and troops that eventually led to the Revolutionary War. In 1776, members of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence, severing the ties between the colonies and the British monarchy.
One distinctive feature of the Declaration of Independence is that its language did not claim to unify the states in anything other than their independence. The Declaration refers more than once to the newly created states as “free and independent states,” not a nation. Although these states cooperated to win independence from Britain, the cooperation ended there for the time being. In 1782, the Confederation Congress adopted a Great Seal that included the Latin motto E pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”). The earliest American identities of the Revolutionary era were conscious of the separateness of the states much more than the unity of the nation, and this would have a great impact on the formation of the US Constitution.
A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT
In addition to adopting federalism, the Declaration of Independence rejected monarchy in favor of a republican form of government. After declaring that “all men are created equal” and possess inalienable natural rights as a divine birthright, Thomas Jefferson unleashed a long list of grievances that took King George III to task as a tyrannical ruler. Forgotten were the conflicts between the colonists and Parliament that led to the war. The signers of the Declaration of Independence addressed their collective anger toward the king himself.
Common Sense
The strong anti-monarchical tone of the Declaration of Independence can be credited partly to the success of Thomas Paine’s popular pamphlet Common Sense, published in early 1776. Paine wrote: “Monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. ‘Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it.”
Republics are inspired by the ancient Romans, who overthrew their king and replaced the monarchy with a government they called res publica (“the commonwealth”). The Roman government was designed to rule on behalf of its citizens, who came together annually to elect government officials. These elected officials held limited power for fixed terms of office. Rather than issue proclamations in the name of a monarch, the Roman government’s proclamations were made in the name of “the Senate and the People of Rome.” A republican form of government is characterized by the absence of a monarch, and the government is administered on behalf of the people by elected representatives.
The early days of the Roman republic provided an exemplary example of the relationship between the government and the governed. Instead of a hereditary king, the Romans elected two consuls each year who shared executive power and command of the military. Publius Valerius was one of the first consuls to be elected. After Valerius’s colleague was killed in battle, people suspected that he intended to be king. At the time, Valerius had been building his house on a hill; many believed he intended the house to be his royal palace. When Valerius heard the rumors, he ordered his house to be torn down in front of everyone and made it a capital offense for anyone to declare themselves king. The people were so pleased with Valerius that they gave him an honorary title, Publicola, meaning “the people’s friend.” Valerius’s display of statesmanship demonstrated that the people rule in a republic.
It took many amendments over several decades before the Constitution realized the Declaration’s promise of a democratic government in which “all men are created equal.” However, from the very beginning, the Constitution declared that the people are the power behind the government, and the division of sovereign powers between the federal government and the states is necessary for citizens to remain in control of their government.
THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION America’s First Constitution
After declaring independence, the Second Continental Congress began preparing a constitution that would create a federal government for the newly independent states. The Congress wanted to create a government that could carry on the war with Britain and establish diplomatic relations with foreign governments, while also keeping its powers limited to avoid pushback from the state governments (who weren’t interested in yet another outside government). It took over a year of debate before Congress finally passed the Articles of Confederation in December of 1777. It was not until 1781 that all of the thirteen original states ratified the Articles, finally giving Congress official status as a governing body.
A FIRM LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP
The Articles of Confederation declared that the states were entering into a “firm league of friendship” but also stressed that the federal government would emphasize the pluribus (“many”) much more than the unum (“one”). The Articles disclaim the idea of complete unity early on: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” The leaders of the state governments still remembered the tyranny of British rule, and they did not want to leave any room for interpretation regarding the limits of Congress’s powers. The states were especially hesitant to surrender any economic powers, such as control of taxation and trade, which remained in the hands of the state governments under the Articles.
The Articles of Confederation established a simple government structure with powers that resembled a permanent military alliance rather than an actual government. The Articles vested federal authority in a unicameral (one-house) Congress, with no independent executive branch or federal judiciary. Nearly all of the powers delegated to Congress related to matters of foreign policy, such as maintaining an army and navy, sending and receiving ambassadors, declaring war, and making treaties. Congress had very limited powers within the United States, such as establishing a post office and a system of weights and measures. While Congress could assess taxes, only the states had the power to collect them.
