Okay, so let's get started. So we left off talking about the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, right? This first constitution established by the Founding Fathers, and it did an awful job at solving collective action problems, right?
So we talked about how by 1786... Economic depression, all the problems caused by the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. Delegates from the states, they get together in Maryland and they try to come up with a way of amending the Articles.
They have to change the Articles and fix these problems, right? But only five states show up, essentially. So they decide that they're going to wait until they hold a convention where all...
all the states could show up and send delegates, right? So in the spring of 1789, in May, they reconvene and they continue to talk. And this time, 55 delegates from 12 states show up.
Now, you might know that there are 13 states in existence at this time, right? You know, there are 13 former colonies. There are 13 states. So who doesn't show up here? Well, Rhode Island doesn't show up.
Rhode Island doesn't send a representative. And if you might remember from last class, right, we said that any amendment to the Articles of Confederation requires what? A unanimous vote. So if Rhode Island doesn't show up, there's no hope of a unanimous vote.
And they purposefully chose not to show up because they did not want the articles amended. They were a very small state, and there are other small states in the union. There's Connecticut and New Jersey, right?
There's other small states. But in particular, Rhode Island is very vulnerable because they knew that in the Articles of Confederation, Confederation, they had, what had to change is that they had to give more power to the national government. And what does that mean?
It means taking away some of the state's sovereignty, right? And of course, Rhode Island doesn't want that, because they will lose power no matter what kind of changes are made, right? Because we know that the big problem with the Articles of Confederation is that the national government has no power.
They can't get, they can't get anything accomplished, right? And so, so Rhode Island doesn't send a representative because they don't want the power of the states to be diminished, especially because they're a small state. And we're going to get to why small states fear any changes to the Articles.
So since Rhode Island does not show up, and since any amendment to the Articles of Confederation requires a unanimous vote, the delegates choose then to just be. begin writing an entirely new document. They're just going to throw out the articles of confederation.
Right? So now they do this secretly. They don't tell anyone about it. And the reason for that is, you know, everyone's worried about the power of the national government growing too large. Right?
And so this is a confederacy. So even if they do increase the power of the national government, right, at least it's still a confederacy. The states will still be sovereign. sovereign so they don't tell anyone that they're scrapping the confederacy right they just start debating how are we going to write a new constitution entirely um now now all of these delegates they they came to this constitutional convention as it will be called um they came with different agendas uh they had different priorities in particular the large states and the small states had different priorities we're going to talk about that in a minute um but But the delegates did have common ground on several philosophical and practical issues.
Right? The nature of man. Right? Remember, John Locke's influence here is very important.
No matter what side of the fence they're on and who should have more power, the national government or the states, they're still heavily, all of them, heavily influenced. by John Locke and Montesquieu too, I didn't really talk about either. So they agreed that the nature of man has natural rights, right?
And they believed together that there are natural rights of human beings and the objects of government essentially are to protect those rights of the individual human being. So they agree on the nature of man, the objects of government, and really they all pretty much agree on the nature of republican government. But there were things they did not agree on, right? They all agreed on this notion that they would be establishing, and this is an American invention, it's called a federal government, right? It's a federal government, which is sort of a hybrid between the extremely strong central government of what we call a unitary system like that in England, and we're going to define unitary system much better in the next lecture, and the extremely weak.
central government of a confederacy. A federal system seeks to be sort of the best of a unitary system and a confederacy. And we'll talk more at length in the next lecture, which is on this topic of federalism.
So they feared a unitary system. Really quick, a unitary system is the opposite of a confederal system. It's where all the power and Power is held by the national government, and the lower political units have no power whatsoever. And the only power that they do have is delegated to them from the national government or by the national government, right?
And so this is what the system is like in England. And they feared this. They really, truly worried about substituting a tyrant in Europe for a tyrant here at home.
So the founders were... famously terrified of a strong central government. And they, of course, wanted to stay away from anything like a king. So a federal government attempts to have a strong enough central government to competently run the country, right?
Have a strong enough national government that can solve collective action problems, but also have it be weak enough to protect the individual liberties of its citizens and maintain the independent power of the states, right? And again, we'll get more into that next class. So they agreed that it's going to be a federal system, but they had huge, huge disagreements on other things.
So basically, the large rich states, what's my next slide here? Okay, so the large rich states and the smaller, less powerful states. they had conflicting interests, right? Because how the large states and the smaller states should be represented in this new constitution, this was something that the delegates had huge and fiery debates on. And I want you to just think about this for a second.
Should all the states count the same in the decision-making, right? In other words, should all the states have equal power? And your initial instinct might be to say, well, yes, right, because that's fair. But what about what the larger states contribute, right?
Should the large states have more power than the small ones? Because there's a good argument that they should, right? They have more people. So shouldn't they have more votes in the decision making, right?
And so. So the principle I want to sort of establish here is, picture two groups of people. Two groups of people, and they're trying to make a joint decision.
And each of these two groups of people have one vote to cast. But one group has 50 people, and the other group has 5 people. Well, which group has... Which group that you're part of gives you as an individual more power, right?
If you're a member of the group of 50 controlling one vote, or you're a member of the group of 5 controlling one vote, who has more political power in that group, right? In other words, as an individual, which group do you want to be in? Which group will give you more power? Well, the people in the group of five have a far greater share of power than those in the group of 50. They have 10 times as much political power, right?
And so if you make the government such that the larger states, or that there's equal voting for states, individuals won't be represented equally as individuals. Okay, so this will probably make this clearer, right? I want you to think of Virginia and think of New Jersey, right? And I picked these two states for a specific reason.
By the way, Virginia did not quite look like this. West Virginia was still part of Virginia at this point. So Virginia was the largest state in the Union, and New Jersey was one of the smaller states, right?
But... Virginia has three times the population, almost, than New Jersey. So, you might say, well, what would be fair here is if Virginia gets three times the votes that New Jersey gets in the legislature. Right?
But if Virginia gets three times the votes than New Jersey in the legislature, then the issues that affect the largest states get addressed at the expense of who? The smaller states, right? Because those states have many more votes.
But then you have a problem. If you make the states have equal power, well then, if you're from Virginia, you have a much larger population sharing one vote. So as an individual living in Virginia, you have a much larger population sharing one vote.
Virginia, you have less political power. You have one-third the political power that people who live in New Jersey have, right? And so this led, and by the way, you have to really... admire their genius, right?
They want this principle that each person is equal, right? And if you have the states having equal power, in other words, no matter the size of the state, the state, no matter what its size, gets one vote in the legislature, it means that the individuals in those different states have differing amounts of political power. And we can't have that. So there were long, intense debates, and these two proposals emerged.
The New Jersey plan and the Virginia plan. Now you know why I picked that, right? So, the Virginia plan...
was written by James Madison. He was one of the delegates from Virginia, and he actually is the one writing the Constitution, actually. So again, New Jersey is this small northern state, and Virginia is the biggest state in the Union at the time.
And the New Jersey State, which is the Jersey plan represented the rights of the small states and so proposed giving each state equal representation regardless of population. So good for small states, not so good for large states. And the Virginia plan represented the rights of the large states and they proposed that representation in the new legislature be based on population, right? So that's good for large states with more population, but not so good for small states. So the delegates at the convention, they were on either side of this issue.
Either they were on the side of the bigger states supporting the Virginia plan or the smaller states supporting the New Jersey plan. And no one could figure out how to solve this impasse. Until two delegates, Roger Sherman and William Johnson from Connecticut, they proposed what is now called the Great Compromise. The Great Compromise. So what they did was, they said, let's have both.
Let's have both the Virginia plan and the New Jersey plan. And how will we do that? We'll have a bicameral legislature. Again, what does bicameral mean?
It means we're going to have a two-house legislature. We'll have a Senate and we'll have a House of Representatives. And Sherman and Johnson proposed that in the Senate there would be equal state representation.
In other words, in the Senate, each state would have two members from each state as senators, giving each state... Equal representation. But in the House, the representation would be based on the state's population.
And legislation would need the approval of both houses in order to pass. So, I want you to think about this because it might not have occurred to you. The Senate gives the small states more power disproportionately to the House.
And the House... would give larger states more power relative to the smaller states. And both sides were content to agree on this compromise because laws have to be passed by both of these houses.
Okay, so another issue the delegates didn't agree on was slavery. And as we'll see, slavery will haunt the republic for a long time. And we'll get deep into that when we talk about civil rights. So, in 1787, the time of the convention, slavery was legal in all states except Massachusetts and Vermont, but it was being phased out in all the northern states. Now, nearly the entire abolitionist movement, who are the abolitionists?
Those who want to abolish slavery. That entire movement... was based almost entirely in the north. And the slave-owning states, they were concentrated in the south.
Okay, so the southern delegation, they insisted that they would not ratify this new constitution if it banned slavery. And this is one of the great failings of the constitution, right? Because we talked about earlier...
when we talked about the principles established under the Declaration of Independence, right? That all men are created equal. And yet, when this Constitution is written, it fails to end slavery. It fails to uphold that principle.
So you see why the Declaration of Independence is actually a worshipped document, right? As opposed to the... to the Constitution, which fails to live up to those principles in the Declaration. And we will fix this later, but at the time, in 1787, the anti-slavery delegates settled for congressional power to limit further importation of slaves and possibly banning slavery in the future. So they stopped short of banning slavery at the writing of the Constitution.
But this also creates a problem now, right? Because the delegates had to determine, well, how is this slave population going to be counted for representation purposes in Congress, right? So, oh, by the way, this is a slide.
This is from an old version of your book that sort of outlines the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. Okay, so... So they don't ban slavery in this new constitution.
And because of this, they have to figure out how will slaves be counted for representation purposes. Are they part of the population or not? And this led to huge, fiery debates as well, because of course, the slave-holding states, they argued for full representation of the slaves. Ironic, right? Because...
Because they weren't even citizens and they didn't have any rights whatsoever. But the larger slave-holding states like Virginia, they realized that their power in the House of Representatives would be increased dramatically if slaves could be counted into the population. Because as we've said, representation in the House of Representatives would be based on population, right?
What do you think? The free states had to say about that. Yeah, screw you, right?
You don't agree with us that slaves should be free citizens. You don't even think they're human beings, but you want the government to treat them as citizens just so you can have a greater representation in Congress? Are you kidding? So they literally almost came to blows, almost had fistfights over this. So the southern states, they wanted to count slaves as part of their population when determining how many representatives they will get in the House of Representatives, even though they had no intention of freeing any slaves or giving them anything close to citizenship rights.
I'm getting excited here. So the northern states argued, look, if slaves can't vote, if slaves aren't citizens, if slaves have no rights, then they should not be counted. And again, there was an impasse.
And this led to a very strange compromise. It's known as the Three-Fifths Compromise. And what they agreed to do was this.
They counted every five slaves as three people for representation purposes. So in effect, if you were a slave, you are three-fifths of a person. And the language that ends up in the Constitution, it's in Article 1, Section 9. It's fairly cowardly, right?
I'll just quote Article 1, Section 9. It reads, and you can, you know, hopefully, so there's a PDF of the Declaration. and the Constitution. I should have said that it's on Blackboard.
You should print them out and have them with you so you could look these things up. Article 1, Section 9 reads, quote, by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years and excluding citizens, I'm sorry, excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. They don't even have the guts to say slavery, right?
They're so ashamed. Now, the smaller states, of course, they're upset with this, right? Especially the smaller northern states.
Because slaves now are going to count in the population to determine the number of representatives in the house. So the smaller states argued, if slaves are going to be counted in the population for representation purposes in the house, then the assessment of taxes should also be based on population. And they all agreed. Okay?
So they came to this compromise. It's an unhappy compromise. So when you look at like Cornel West or Mark Lamont Hill or anybody, leaders, they always say that the starting point for African Americans in the United States is three-fifths of a person.
But that's not even true. They're zero-fifths of a person. They're not citizens.
They don't have any rights. They can't vote. They're basically property.
And we'll get to the Supreme Court case that declared them property, shockingly, later on. That slaves are essentially like a chair. They're a piece of property. They're human beings, but they're really not. They're property.
And I hope you feel the disgust when we go through the civil rights, some of the really awful Supreme Court decisions that we're going to discuss later on. Okay. So I want to talk a little more about the Enlightenment.
It's called the Age of Reason. in, right? And so there are several philosophers other than John Locke that, so we talked about John Locke, right?
He advocated popular sovereignty, right? He advocated equal rights and the social contract that we talked about, that the purpose of government is to protect your God-given, unalienable human rights, right? So, but there are other philosophers of this period, right? There's Isaac Newton. Well, what is Isaac Newton?
Isaac Newton is the greatest scientist who ever lived, right? But it's the idea that there are laws of nature, right? There are forces and balance.
And there's reason. Everything should be guided not by superstition, but by science, right? And this is not necessarily anti-religious. It's the Enlightenment philosophy.
In fact, Isaac Newton... Newton and Locke were very devout Christians, by the way. Isaac Newton was nearly a saint in many ways, if you know about his life. So it's not necessarily anti-religious, but what it is, is saying that we should be guided not by silly superstition, not by tradition, not by some arbitrary right of a monarch to govern the people. That's nonsense, right?
You know, we should be guided by reason. And reason dictates that whatever is for the good of the people... and this goes hand in hand with Locke, that whatever is good for the people, that's how we should be governed, right?
And there's so much to say about Montesquieu. So Baron de Montesquieu, he was the one who initially talked about limited government and checks and balances. David Hume, David Hume is great.
He was an atheist, by the way, but he talked about politics as being a competition among contending interests. And he actually became very good friends with, in Scotland, Adam Smith. And he would actually have a huge influence on Adam Smith.
So all of this philosophy, this new philosophy, that says it's the individual that matters, not the state, not the power of the king. That's not what matters. What matters is the power.
of the people. So all of that amounts to essentially a revolution in the popular views of political authority, right? They affirm that authority rests on consent of the governed, not on tradition, not on some silly ceremony, right? Not on some arbitrary divine right. And I'm going to show you a clip right now from a famous...
A famous film. It's a classic film from the 70s. Gosh, I hope you can see this well. So, I want you to think for a second.
Do you know the story of King Arthur? Lucius Artorius Castus. There really was such a person. It's believed he was a Roman general. or a Roman commander who stayed behind in Britannia when the Romans had to leave because Rome was being sacked.
So let me just see what I'm looking for here. What am I looking for? Excalibur ending.
Okay, so really quick, what's the story of King Arthur, right? This is a movie that takes it very seriously, okay? A movie called Excalibur. It's a great movie, but you know the story. You've all seen the Disney movie, probably, right?
The Sword in the Stone. How does King Arthur become king? Well, he pulls the sword from the stone, and he wields the sword, Excalibur, right? And...
And Excalibur is guarded by this demigod called the Lady of the Lake, right? She's this demigod, and she's the guardian of Excalibur, right? So, you're all thinking this is quite silly.
And you should be! That's how an Enlightenment thinker would think. So let's see how, like, the contrast here...
And by the way, I don't own the rights... I have to say this for YouTube. I don't own the rights to the movie Excalibur.
They only belong to the creators of that film itself. So let's watch really quick this scene from Excalibur and how seriously they take the story of how Arthur becomes king. Okay, so it's...
It's so serious, it's silly, right? Again, a disclaimer, I don't own the rights to this film either. These rights are solely and exclusively the rights of the filmmakers themselves. Again, I have to say this stuff when I include it in a YouTube video.
Okay, so that's how Arthur becomes king, right? Is that a legitimate way to rule people? Because you have a sword?
So this is a movie from the 1970s, a classic comedy, and it's King Arthur, right, our same hero, which in the other movie this story was taken so seriously, King Arthur stumbles upon Dennis, the constitutional peasant. And King Arthur is not on a horse, that's a long story. If any of you know about this movie, you know that it's fairly legendary. And if you like British humor, it's absurd humor, so I'm...
I'm Scottish and English myself, so I dig this humor. So let's just watch. The reason I'm showing you this is because it exemplifies how a philosopher from the Enlightenment would look upon someone claiming to have authority based on these silly ideas, based on arbitrary power or divine right. Old woman! Man!
Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there? I'm 37. What?
I'm 37. I'm not old. Well, I can't just call you man. You could say Dennis.
I didn't know you were called Dennis. Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you? I did say sorry about the old woman, but from behind you looked...
Well, I object to it. He automatically treated me like an inferior. Well, I am king. Oh, king, eh? Very nice.
And how did you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. If there's ever going to be any progress...
Dennis, there's some lovely films down here. Oh. How'd you do?
How'd you do? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
King of the who? The Britons. Who are the Britons? Well, we all are.
We are all Britons. And I am your king. I didn't know we had a king.
I thought we were an autonomous collective. You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes... Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again. That's what it's all about. If only people would... Please, please, good people.
I am in haste. Who lives in that castle? I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who lives in that No one lives there. Then who is your lord?
We don't have a lord. What? I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Yes.
But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting. Yes, I see. By a civil majority in the case of purely internal affairs.
Be quiet. But by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major... Be quiet. I order you to be quiet.
Order? Who does he think he is? I am your king. What? I didn't vote for you!
You don't vote for kings? Well, how do you become king then? The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
That is why I'm your king! Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. The supreme executive power derives from a man...
from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Be quiet! You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
Shut up! If I went round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away. Shut up, will you?
Shut up! Now we see the violence inherent in the system. Shut up!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I'm being repressed!
Bloody peasant! Oh! What a giveaway. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh?
That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?
Okay, so you sort of get the point here. I love this clip because Dennis the constitutional peasant exemplifies the rejection of arbitrary authority, right? You know, a crazy woman in a pond giving out swords, that's no basis for a system of government. The system of any legitimate system of government is what John Locke argues.
It's based on the consent of the governed, right? So I love that clip. It's great stuff.
And it really is, I show that because it exemplifies this rejection of tradition as a traditional authority, right, of arbitrary. We are governed if the people consent to it, right? Okay, so they make this new constitution, and they're going to base it.
on the three ideals and the two guidelines of the Declaration of Independence, right? The three ideals that we talked about. Equality, consent of the governed, and equal rights.
Okay? And the two guidelines? Accountability and governability that we've already talked about. So the document is written. It's written largely by James Madison.
And so Madison... Thank you. Madison is one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived.
There's so much to say about James Madison. By the time he was 11, he was speaking four languages. He was writing and speaking in Greek. He was really the smart...
After Hamilton, he is the smartest of the Founding Fathers. He is Hamilton's, almost Hamilton's equal. If you know anything about Hamilton, Hamilton is one of the... you know, great geniuses in the history of the world. So, you know, I probably shouldn't take too much time talking about Madison, but Madison was a great scholar.
He is America's, in many ways, America's first true political philosopher, right? He is known as the father of the Constitution. because he's the one who largely writes it.
And he got, in 1787, when he went to the Constitutional Convention, he got there several weeks earlier, and he reviewed his study of all the democracies in the history of the world. And as we said before, every democracy before the American Republic, every democracy failed. Every democracy ended in... tyranny, right? As Franklin says, tyranny is, I'm sorry, democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner.
Democracy is tyranny. Now, this is a huge problem. And Madison is setting about with the founding fathers to write the constitution for the first true republic since Rome.
So I want you to think about how daunting this is. And in some ways, he was really terrified of this. It has to be democratic, right? But it can't be a democracy because democracy is tyranny.
And we have to avoid the pitfalls of democracy that we spoke about earlier, right? The worst outcome, the worst outcome in politics is tyranny. And what form of tyranny are democracies susceptible to?
Tyranny of who? Think for a second what democracy is. Tyranny of the majority at the expense of the minority. Enormously important to understand. I can't emphasize this enough.
Because if you have the majority ruling, it means the minority doesn't get their way. It means the minority can be oppressed. And this is what has happened in every, you know, and even, again, as we said, the French Revolution, right? It started as democracy until they started killing all of the higher classes.
And they revolted. And the minority who was being oppressed and literally having all their heads cut off. They, of course, fought back, and you had war, and it ended in tyranny.
So, you know, prior to James Madison and prior to the American Republic, it was believed that if democracy could survive, and it was a big if, if it could survive, it could only survive in, like, in small face-to-face societies, right? Right. like Pericles Athens, Rousseau's Geneva, right? You know, it couldn't survive in a large country like the 13 states that existed at the time. It was just too big, right?
So they decided, and one of the biggest problems was this idea of factions, right? This idea of factions. So the Constitution, when it's written, the states are skeptical. Because once they basically go public with... this new constitution, right?
And they tell everyone that we've scrapped the Articles of Confederation and we have a new constitution now. It's going to be called a federal government. It's going to be a republic. The states are very skeptical.
The states have to ratify it, however. So James Madison, backed by Washington and Franklin, they get together with Hamilton and John Jay. And in the fall of 1787, they devise this persuasive effort in the form of essays called the Federalist Papers.
And what this is, is a media blitz arguing for ratification of this new American invention called a federal government. And these essays, they are reprinted in newspapers, and they eventually turn these skeptics... into believers, essentially.
So there were people, so these were the federalists, right? They're called federalists because they're advocating for this new form of federal government. And there were people who were anti-federalists, right?
They were against this new form of government. They were against it because why? It gave too, from their perspective, it gave too much power to the national government, right?
So these anti-Federalists, they were fewer, of course, and many of them were actually fairly radical. So, and that's a whole story unto itself. Now, the two most famous of these essays of the Federalist Papers are Federalist 51 and 10. So, So let's take a peek at this, right? So the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, they're arguing in these Federalist Papers that we are going to make this new government, this new Federalist government.
And Madison argues for a stronger central government to, again, solve collective action problems, right? This is the basic function of government, to solve collective action problems. And...
This is one of Madison's famous quotes. He says, If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Right?
The constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other. Right? So, you know, if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
So policymakers are not angels. We want to give enough power for the government to govern, to solve collective action problems, but not so much power that they have power to trample our rights. It must be powerful to govern, but it has to be self-restraining. And how do you do that?
You don't concentrate power into one body, right? The constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner that they are checks against each other. They have leverage over each other. And this will make the government self-restraining.
He also says in Federalist 51 that ambition must be made to counteract ambition. And what he's talking about is if you put power in one branch of the government and power in the other, The fact that they both have power and will want to use it will counteract each other, right? And this is, again, checks and balances. So it's how do you use human nature to guide how we shape governments, right? So let's look at Federalist 10. Now, Federalist 10, and this is a test question, so pay attention.
I'm going to ask you what Federalist 10 says. And the answer is Madison warns in Federalist 10 against the threat of factions, right? So this is why Madison is regarded as one of the great political theorists in history, right? Because prior to Federalist 10, prior to the writing of this Constitution, right, it was believed... that what why do democracies fail Well, it's because of there are rival parties, right?
So let's read this in Federalist 10. The public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, that's the key, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. so again we're back to this idea of tyranny of the majority and why have throughout history before madison everyone all the political theorists thought that democracy could not survive because of factions ripping the country apart, right? What Madison's, Madison turns this thinking on his head.
He says, no, no, no, no. Factions are not the enemy of democracy. They are the friend of democracy.
And how do you solve this problem of factions? So he makes the argument, you don't, if, if majorities are, are what caused tyranny. simple, don't have majorities, have these shifting coalitions of minorities, right?
And sometimes these minor parties will coalesce on one issue, but perhaps on another. Sometimes they'll coalesce in one of those institutions within the government, but not in the other. And so this idea of separating and really giving more power to the national government, yet decentralizing it in that national government, it's really genius, really.
And how they accomplish this is really interesting. There's all sorts of blocking mechanisms here. So we're going to talk at length about this. But, you know, people are always saying, you know, oh, you know, the federal, you know, the U.S. government, it's broken, it's dysfunctional, they never get anything done, right? You know, I'm sorry, it's supposed to be that way.
It's designed to be that way, right? There's an old joke, right? What's the difference between death and taxes?
Death doesn't get any worse every time Congress meets. You probably don't think that's funny. Anyway, so, so, I think that's hilarious, by the way. But, but...
But the point that I'm getting to here is, look, this new government will have power divided, right? There are all sorts of blocking mechanisms. There's vetoes. There's veto overrides.
There's super majorities, right? There's three branches of government. In fact, within the legislature, that's divided into two branches, right?
It's divided into the Senate and the House. There's all sorts of these blocking mechanisms to make sure that... there are not these massive changes in policy overnight. This is enormously important to understand.
Our U.S. government, our system is designed to get very little done. And this may shock you. And we're going to go through, basically the rest of the course, is going to cover a lot of these blocking mechanisms.
Why are all these blocking mechanisms in place? To ensure that tyranny does not rise. If you look at Britain, we're going to talk about Britain later. Britain is a unitary system.
All the power is concentrated within one body. The U.S. The U.S. The British House of Commons. And believe it or not, Britain has been a very unstable country because so much of the power is in one body.
And we'll talk about that when we talk about federalism. All right. So the rest of Federalist 51 is talking about these checks and balances, right? In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this.
You must first... enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. So you can't, he says, if men were angels, we wouldn't need government, but men are not angels. So this government has to have institutions that are self-checking, right?
That keep it under control. That stop the overbearing majority from abusing the minority. And by the way, it's not always worked, right? You know, when gold was discovered on Cherokee land, what did President Andrew Jackson do?
Force the Cherokees off their land. We committed genocide against Native Americans. It's disgusting.
Again, the black experience, we're not even up to the point of even admitting here that African Americans are human beings. So as great as all this is, and it is great, we should still be aware it's not perfect. And we are still improving our union, as we'll see.
Okay, so we wind up with three branches of government. that is separated horizontally, and we'll get to what that means in a bit, and this federal system where there is a strong central government, but the states are strong too, right? So we strengthen the legislative and executive branches.
We don't really create a strong judiciary. The story of how the judiciary actually becomes a check on the state the other two branches is a wonderful story that we'll get to near the end of the course. So we have three branches of government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. This national court system is developed and it allows for the creation of lower courts as well, but the national government's court, the U.S. Supreme Court, does not have a lower court system.
not have a lot of power initially. It will gain power, as we'll talk about. So we separate and balance the power, and it's not into one particular body.
So the U.S. Constitution improves on the Articles of Confederation by creating a stronger national... government, right?
And this central government, this national government, now finally has the power to regulate the nation's commerce and the economy, has the power to levy taxes, pay debts, borrow money, enormously important, you know, establish a national currency and regulate its value, and regulate domestic and international commerce. And the U.S. Constitution is the oldest and it's the shortest written constitution in the world.
And let's take a look at its structure. So, so, I, I have, I have, so, so, uh... The structure of the U.S.
Constitution, there is the preamble, and then it's comprised of seven articles and then 27 amendments. And the first ten amendments are what we call the Bill of Rights. Now, here's three test questions for you. Are you ready? Article 1 establishes the legislative branch.
Article 2 establishes the executive branch. Article 3 establishes the judiciary. And those are your three questions. Now, Article 1, it's the longest.
Because the founders wanted the legislative branch. legislature to be very strong and they wanted a weak executive, right? So this is all our national government that we're talking about for the most part, right?
Articles 1, 2, and 3 are how this federal government, we call it, but the federal government, well, when we get to federalism, I'll define federalism a little better. We call it the federal government. It's really the national government because part of this federal system...
is the relationship between the states and the national government. So it's all the federal government, right? So, um... So we're going to give a rundown of this. Article I, Article II, and Article III establish the three branches, as it shows on the slide.
Article IV is largely copied from the Articles of Confederation. And what Article IV is all about is how these states will relate to each other. In other words, what is the power relationship among the states? If there's a law in one state...
state and you travel to another state? How do you as a citizen of New York, when you travel to New Jersey, what are your rights in New Jersey if you're a New York citizen? Right? And so that is very much what Article 4 is about, the relationship between the states. Article 5 is the amendment process.
We're not really going to spend too much time on the amendment process. For an intro course, you know, I mean, I could, I don't... consider it to be terribly compelling.
It's just a procedure of how you go about changing the Constitution. But we will mention amending the Constitution all the time through this course, because there are certain... Well, I'll leave it until we get there. Okay. Article 6 is enormously important.
It establishes that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The Constitution is supreme. And this is not...
not well appreciated because, you know, I ask the average student, you know, if there's a federal law, a law made by the national government, do the states have to obey that law? And almost every student I ever talk to says, well, yes, that's the national government. The national government is superior over the states.
And that's not true. That is absolutely not true. And when we talk deeper about federalism in the next lecture, you'll understand this better.
The states are sovereign here. The states have power, but so does the national government. The national government has power, but so do the states.
If it's not regarding a matter of human rights, which are protected by the Constitution, the states do not have to follow federal law. But the states usually do, and we'll talk about why that is. So if there's a federal law that conflicts with the Constitution, who wins? The Constitution. If there's a state law that conflicts with the Constitution, who wins?
The Constitution. If there's a state law that conflicts with federal law, who wins? Right, the Constitution, okay?
All right. Article 7 is about ratification, not terribly important. We're not really going to mention it here. The amendments are... The last half of...
the course is essentially the amendments. Enormously important. There's so much to say, but that's all about your civil rights and civil liberties, and we're going to talk at length about that. All right.
Right. So Article 1, it establishes the legislative branch. And right now what we're going to do is a quick overview of the U.S.
Constitution. And then we're going to spend the rest of the course unpacking all of this. Right.
So Article 1, it establishes the rules and requirements for the legislative branch. It establishes that there will be this House of Representatives and it will be completely reelected every two years. And as we said. the House of Representatives is the Virginia Plan. The number of delegates to the House of Representatives, the number of members per state, will be based on that state's population.
And we'll talk at length about that later. Section 3 says that there will be a Senate, and the members of that Senate will be elected not every two years, but every six years. And there's a logic behind this. And each state will have two senators, right? And that's the New Jersey Plan.
Equal vote for each state. So you see how these two principles of the Great Compromise are here, right? The House of Representatives is based on a state's population. And so the House of Representatives has disproportionately more power for larger states.
The Senate has two senators for each state. So two votes for each state. And that represents the... equal power of the states.
And so in the Senate, the smaller states have disproportionate power. Now, one thing, you know, a lot of students miss this question on the exams, so I'm going to tell you. This is a question for when we get to Congress, but I'm going to let you know about it now to be aware. Initially, Members of the Senate were not directly elected by the people. There was a step in between the people.
So House Senators were elected prior to an amendment of the Constitution that changes this, and we'll talk about that later. But prior to the amendment that changes this, this will change later because it's seen as more democratic, right? But you would elect...
For example, you would elect your state legislature directly. The voters would elect their state legislatures. But then the state legislatures would pick the U.S. senators.
That's originally how the U.S. Constitution was written. Now, when we talk about the imprudence of democracy, the interesting thing is when the Constitution was amended and this was changed to senators elected every six years by the people directly. this is when our federal budget exploded.
And so keep in mind these dangers of democracy because we're going to revisit them again and again. Our federal budget exploded. Federal spending skyrocketed almost immediately when senators... The idea was the senators weren't to be so beholden to the electorate. It was meant to be a less democratic...
institution, to avoid the whims of the mob, of the people, right? That was the idea. But it is less democratic, and that's on purpose, to avoid these pitfalls. So we're going to talk about this more when we talk about Congress during the Congress lecture.
Okay, so I'm just going to tell you now. Article 1, Section 8 is, if you get anything out of... this course, it's this slide. I can't, I can't emphasize enough the importance of Article 1, Section 8. Article 1, Section 8. Article 1, Section 8. Article 1, Section 8. Article 1, Section 8. Don't forget it!
Because Article 1, Section 8, it is the most important part of the Constitution. And what it does is it defines the power of Congress. and therefore the power of the national government. And this is what all the fights between Republicans and Democrats are about.
What is the power of the national government? What should the national government be involved in? What should they not be involved in? Is that a power of the national government? Is it proper and right for the national government to interfere in this or not?
It's what every political debate is about today. Article I, Section 8 defines what we call the enumerated powers of Congress. What does enumerated mean?
It means the written down. It means the explicated power. powers of Congress. They're written down. And what are those written down, enumerated, explicitly stated powers of Congress?
Well, the power to tax, the power to borrow, the power to make currency, the power to regulate commerce, interstate commerce, by the way, and we'll talk more about that, grant patents and copyrights, establish a military, and very importantly, declare war. It is Congress who declares war, not the President. These are the, and there's a few more than this. But Article I, Section 8 defines the enumerated powers of Congress, the stated powers of Congress.
Okay, so why is this controversial? Well, because in addition to the enumerated powers of Congress, There are the implied powers of Congress, and that is not stated outright. So part of Article I, Section 8 is what we call the necessary and proper clause. So what this means is, and we'll just read what this says on the slide, the necessary and proper clause gives Congress the implied powers to do that which is necessary and proper for carrying out its enumerated duties.
And so what do we mean by this? So by the way, there are a number of clauses in the Constitution. Well, what's a clause?
No, it's not Santa's last name. What's a clause? It's what my cats use to ruin my furniture.
No, that's not a clause. A clause, in grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete concept. That's what a clause is. And so the Necessary and Proper Clause conveys that Congress has implied powers to do that which is necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated duties. I'll give you an example.
The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, was established by the federal government under the Necessary and Proper Clause. Because under the enumerated powers, it... It doesn't say in the enumerated powers that Congress has the power to establish an agency to regulate airlines.
Why? Airlines didn't exist yet, right? But it does say that they have the power to regulate interstate commerce.
And since airplanes fly across state lines and is an industry, right, that is commerce. And so they have that power to regulate commerce. And so... In order to regulate that commerce, meaning the airline industry, it is necessary and proper that they establish a federal executive agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, to administer the laws regarding regulating commerce in that industry. But nowhere does it say that Congress has the power to establish these agencies.
They had that power automatically because it's necessary and proper that they do that in order to carry out the regulation of interstate commerce. Now, you might say, well, so it's obvious, right? No, it's not obvious, and that's the problem. Because this gets the federal government into areas that the founding fathers did not intend.
And so there are huge fights as to what is necessary and proper. What are the implied powers? And, of course, the U.S.
Supreme Court rules on this regularly. The U.S. Supreme Court has to figure this out, right? Because they're the ones who are interpreting what does necessary and proper mean when it comes to the enumerated powers of the national government. Okay, let's move on. Article 1, Section 9. So, I love Article 1, Section 9 because all of it is like a big a**hole.
F you to the British government, right? So in Europe and in England, the government regularly violated the rights of its citizens for political purposes. So Article 1, Section 9 says, the government is prohibited from denying citizens a writ of habeas corpus.
And what this means, so habeas corpus means produce the body, right? And so what this means is you cannot be imprisoned without being informed of the charges against you. So this is basically a right to an indictment, right? So in order for the government to put you in prison, they have to have a reason, and they have to tell you that reason.
They have to tell you about the charges, right? But of course, what would happen in England, right? Especially...
before the 1640s. Before the 1640s, when we had the English Civil War and Parliament really took over the country and eventually wound up killing the king. So, you know, the reason we have to know so much about British history because U.S. history is British history prior to 1776, right? So the king would just throw political enemies in jail.
Right? Without being informed of any charges. Just throw them in jail. You're against the king, so you go to the tower. And we'll starve you to death.
And this would actually, of course, this is a denial of human rights. So just throwing someone in jail without being... You can't try to punish someone unless they've committed a crime.
A true crime. And we have criminal laws... to help society deal with collective action problems, right? So this is a principle that we're sort of establishing here, that we are not like Britain.
We don't do things like Britain. We don't oppress our citizens. Well, we actually wind up doing that at some point, but, you know, play along for now.
So the government is prohibited from denying citizens a writ of habeas corpus. That will be a test question. What does habeas corpus mean?
It means no imprisonment without being informed of the charges against you. Also, there will be no bills of attainder. Well, what does that mean?
Well, it means, so the king... Instead of just, like, you know, imprisoning someone without, he would just punish them. Say, okay, fine that person, right? Without due process, without trial, without habeas corpus, just, okay, this person is punished. You know, it could include imprisonment, but, you know, it's just a punishment being issued, saying, you know, you're against the king, so, you know, you have to pay a fine.
Or whatever the punishment is. And then perhaps the worst of the worst. Article 1, Section 9 prevents the government from establishing what's called ex post facto laws.
Laws that make an action a crime after they've occurred. So let's say you had a political enemy. Let's say the king has a political enemy.
And you can't legitimately charge him with anything. Because you try not to be a tyrant because then you become unpopular, right? And you might have the nobles at knife point do bad things to you, which has happened in England. So the king would have ex post facto laws. In other words, what do we know that this guy did that we could then make criminal and then arrest him retroactively?
I mean, it's unbelievable, right? And Britain is the first democracy, by the way, the first true democracy. It took a thousand years for them to be the first true republic in many ways.
All right, so Article II establishes the executive branch. It establishes the rules and requirements for the executive branch. It did not initially set up succession properly.
And we'll talk about this when we talk about the presidency and the bureaucracy. But it made it unclear. how the succession would work if anything happened to the president.
So there's a president and there's a vice president, and they have to be elected every four years by an electoral college. Now, we talked a little bit about that sort of in the single-member district system, the winner-take-all system a little bit. We're going to revisit this again.
But when you vote for president, you're not voting for the president. You're voting for an elector. to then cast their vote for the president. So you might remember when Trump was elected in 2016, it was believed that he was such an unacceptable candidate that there was a push to get the electors who voted for the electors for Trump to not vote for Trump.
An electoral college. This electoral college exists as a buffer. Again, we fear democracy. This is a buffer system between the people's decision directly electing someone who's unacceptable.
That's really the reason for it. So it was believed by many that Trump is so unacceptable that it's time to use this mechanism, the electoral college, which is established specifically so someone crazy The people don't vote for someone who's crazy, right? The people who add, you know, I'm not particularly a Trump fan, but he's not my cup of tea. But, you know, the push to get the Electoral College to not vote for Trump did not work, right? Even the Hillary people were saying, let's vote for John Kasich, but let's do anything but vote for Trump, right?
So, you know... We'll talk about Trump a little later. He's a piece of work, for sure. But whether or not he's unacceptable to be president, I mean, that might be overstating the case. So we'll talk more about this.
It also establishes the role of the president. The president has multiple roles, and we're going to talk about those. The most important of those roles, arguably, is as commander-in-chief. We have a civilian head to our military. Why does Pakistan have generals take over their government, like Pervez Musharraf?
Well, we don't have that here. In fact, when a general does become president, they have to retire. Like President Eisenhower, who was a very good president, by the way.
We're going to tell some good stories about Eisenhower later on when we talk about civil rights. So, the president is the commander-in-chief, is the head of the military. And he acts as the nation's chief diplomat. So you might be wondering, before we said that Congress and the enumerated powers, oh boy, Article I, Section 8, Congress has the power to declare war, right?
But the president is the commander-in-chief of the military and has the ability to send the military into power. So isn't this a contradiction? Yes, in a way, and we're going to talk at length about that. And the president is also the nation's chief diplomat.
He makes treaties, but he makes those treaties with foreign nations with consent of the Senate. It's called the Advice and Consent of the Senate. So two-thirds of the Senate must approve treaties. Now, there was a recent treaty, sort of.
We call it the Arraial Treaty. Iran deal? Was that a treaty?
Well, by almost every definition, it was a treaty. But as we'll talk about it later, it was in reality, technically, an executive agreement. And we'll go over the difference later on.
Even though, in effect, it is a treaty, President Obama did not believe that the Senate would ratify it. And so, instead of getting the Senate to ratify it, he decided to to approve it, he made it an executive agreement. Now, the difference between the two is essentially this.
If it's a treaty, it can only be overturned by Congress. If it's an executive agreement, then the next president can just overturn it. And so Trump has this power now to overturn the JCPOA, the Iran agreement. We'll talk more about this later when we talk about foreign policy. Okay.
And of course, the president appoints federal judges, grants reprieves. and pardons. Okay.
Article two also outlines, even though it's establishing the executive branch, well, it establishes the state of the union. The president must give a report on his legislative agenda and what he intends for the future and give a report on what he's done for the past year. He must give that report to Congress.
It has become a ceremony for the United States. Um, that's, that's, uh, it's. It's the speech given every January by the president, basically outlining what he's going to be doing for the next year and going over his accomplishments.
President Trump's State of the Union was actually quite good. You should go back and watch it. I don't think I could watch it a second time, but I'm just saying. It was good because it was actually sort of normal. And there were some actually excellent parts of it.
So Trump is sort of learning all. all of this stuff on the job. But, and by the way, early on, anyone who complimented Trump, like Van Jones on CNN, was attacked, by the way. So it's sort of silly.
But getting back to the point I'm making here, and we'll talk about the State of the Union again a little later when we get to the presidency. But Article 2, even though it's outlining the... executive branch's role, in Section 4, it states what a power of Congress is regarding the executive.
Regarding the executive. And so what this is, is the power of Congress to impeach the president for conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. you cannot impeach the president for being a jackass.
And for that matter, you cannot impeach the president for being a liar. And by the way, I don't know of one president who has not lied. Outright.
Knowing he was telling something that was untrue. I don't know. know if one.
Oh, Barack Obama. You think Barack Obama has not lied? When he said it, he knew when he gave the speech to try and get the American public support for the Affordable Care Act. When he said it, he knew.
that you could not keep your insurance plan. And yet he told the American public that you could when you could not, and he knew it. Right? I don't need to go over President Bush and the weapons of mass destruction and, of course, some of the worst cases in the Reagan administration and in the Nixon administration.
Right? So, you know, you can't be... I see the...
bumper sticker all the time on the back of some people's cars and it says, impeach the liar. And I wonder which liar are they talking about? Because there's so many.
You cannot impeach anyone for being a liar or being an idiot. Lyndon Johnson should have been impeached a hundred times over if you're talking about being an idiot. Because he killed many American servicemen in Vietnam because he's an idiot. So we really need, you know, what exactly are people talking about when they say impeaching Donald Trump?
Someone tell me, what is an impeachable offense? Right? And can you...
demonstrate it and give me evidence of what, colluding with Russia? That's not been demonstrated. And by the way, Ted Kennedy colluded with Russia against Ronald Reagan.
This, don't take my word for it. You do your own research. Okay?
Nobody talks about that. So there is nothing that Trump can be impeached for. Why?
Because nothing demonstrates that he's committed a crime. He may be a complete jackass, but that's not a crime. You can't be impeached for being an asshole, right?
So, okay, if that were the case, everyone would be impeached. Now, I should say, impeachment is just the bringing of charges by the House of Representatives. It doesn't mean you're kicked out of office, right? President Clinton was impeached. Andrew Johnson was impeached, and that's it.
Richard Nixon was not impeached. He would have been impeached, and he would have been kicked out of office. He counted the votes, and he resigned.
So we'll talk a little bit more about this. Okay. Article III establishes the judicial branch.
It creates the Supreme Court, and it grants it original jurisdiction and appellate jurisdiction. So original jurisdiction. jurisdiction really quickly just means that the court has the authority to act as a trial court.
And we'll talk about that later. In other words, the case originates in the Supreme Court, like Bush v. Gore, for example, right? So when there's a dispute over the election of the president, Bush v. Gore, actually the court had original jurisdiction there.
Everything, so, and the cases in which there is original jurisdiction for the Supreme Court is very, very limited. Their other jurisdiction is appellate jurisdiction. And appellate jurisdiction means that the Supreme Court acts as an appellate court.
They review lower court cases. Now, well, I'll talk about judicial review in a second. When they have appellate jurisdiction and they review lower court cases, they have a certain power that we're going to talk about in a minute.
So Article 3 also guarantees that... that the federal judges will serve for life. And the idea behind this is that you don't want them to be threatened to be removed if they don't vote a certain way, right? So you want them to be above any sort of political influence, right?
And that's the idea behind that. And also, Article 3 guarantees a person accused of a federal crime the right to a jury trial. And we're going to talk at length. at length about that.
Okay. So think about it. What is the power of the Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court? What is its power?
What is its main power? Well, Its main power is the power to declare a law constitutional or not. And that's its main check against the other two branches, right? That's the great power that it has.
If Congress and the president agree on a law, but that law is unconstitutional, then that law goes away because the court will rule it so. Right? So this is how the judicial branch checks the...
actions of the other two branches. And here's the interesting thing. This power was actually not written into the Constitution.
That's why I had that big blue line there, being separate from Article 3. They left this check out. And yet we know that the court does have this power to declare laws unconstitutional and strike them down, or to declare them constitutional and uphold them. And so, how did they get this power?
They got this power through a Supreme Court case called Marbury v. Madison. And when we cover the judiciary, I'm going to cover this story in all... I'm going to cover the story of Marbury v. Madison.
Marbury v. Madison. It's one of my favorite stories to tell, and I'm going to cover it in all the gory details. It's an amazing story.
But what I want you to know for now and for exam one is that Marbury v. Madison in 1803, that's the Supreme Court that established the power of the court to declare the constitutionality of a law. And that power is what we call judicial review. Judicial review, that is a test question. In fact, there are two test questions here, right?
I'm going to ask you to define what judicial review is, the power to declare a law unconstitutional or constitutional, right? That's what judicial review is defined as, but I'm also going to ask you what's the court case. that gave, or how did the Supreme Court get that power?
And it's Marbury v. Madison. Okay. I love this slide. This slide is beautiful.
I think that, so this slide comes from your book. It might be an older version of your book. I don't know if this exact slide is in your book at the moment. This is beautiful. I love this slide.
It essentially shows, you know, you should print out this slide and, you know, keep it on your... your toilet tank for good reading, okay? Because you should look this over multiple times.
It shows the separation of powers and the leverage, the checks that each of the branches have on each other. And it's really quite genius, really. So in the lower right-hand corner, you have the executive branch, right? And the executive branch has checks against the legislation.
legislative branch. What are those checks? Well, when Congress passes a law, the primary check against the legislature, against Congress, is that the president can veto that legislation.
That's the biggest check, right? So the president plays a role in legislation and can veto legislation. The president can, of course, call special sessions of Congress. There's been some famous ones immediately following 9-11.
President Bush... called a special session of Congress. A special session of Congress is also called for the president's State of the Union as well. And the president can propose laws to Congress, but he can't introduce laws. And the distinction is, the president, if he wants to get a law introduced in either the Senate or the House, he has to get a member of those legislative bodies to do so.
He can't do it. The president... The president does not have the power to introduce legislation, but he can propose legislation, suggest it. And that is not a trivial power for the president to have. The president, of course, can issue executive agreements with foreign nations.
So we just mentioned one. The Iran deal was an executive agreement. And it is circumventing the advice and consent of Congress's. of the Senate's power on treaties. Right?
But the danger with that is the next president can easily overturn it with their own executive agreement and cancel it. The legislature has... So I should also say the executive has checks not just against the legislature but against the judiciary. Right? The president's checks on the judicial branch, they can grant pardons to people who are convicted of federal crimes in the federal court system.
And the president is the one who appoints the justices to the Supreme Court. Right? This is a very important power. Now, the legislature, Congress, has a check on the other two branches.
Congress has a check over the president, over the executive branch, by what? Just failing to pass bills that the president suggests. Right?
At the end of the day, who's writing the laws and making the laws for the president to sign or to veto? Well, it's Congress. And even if the president does veto it, Congress can override that presidential veto.
veto with a two-thirds vote. Congress can also, so when the president makes judicial appointments to the court, the Senate, the Senate Judiciary Committee. can refuse to confirm them. They can refuse to confirm his cabinet appointments as well.
Right? So all of the cabinet appointments, they have to go and testify before Congress and prove that they're fit. And by the way, so do justices of the Supreme Court who are appointed by the president.
And of course, we just said this, the Congress can impeach, try, and remove the president if the president has committed a crime. And the Congress can just refuse to ratify treaties. There's been some famous ones, right? The Treaty of Versailles was not ratified by the U.S. Congress, right?
And that actually was when the United States failed to join the League of Nations immediately following World War I. And at the end of the day, you have to know this. The legislative branch is the most powerful branch. They control the money.
And they can just refuse to fund any laws passed. They control all appropriations and spending of money. They can just refuse to fund an executive order of the president.
You know, Congress is, at the end of the day, the most powerful branch, if they choose to exercise it. And that's something we're going to get to later as well. So, they control spending.
They have the power of the purse. That's what it's called often. They regulate interstate commerce and commerce with foreign nations.
Congress is the one who declares wars. And of course, they have the power to approve treaties, as we said. Now, Congress also checks the judiciary because they have the power to eliminate or to refuse to create federal courts.
So they can't eliminate the Supreme Court. They can impeach and remove judges if they have committed a crime as well. And again, in concert with their check against the executive, they can refuse to confirm judicial appointments. And then the Senate Judiciary does that.
Now, one power that we're going to talk about next lecture when we talk about federalism is that Congress sets the number of justices on the Supreme Court. So the Constitution does not say how many justices should be on the court. And this will play a huge role in the history of how federalism will play out.
And of course, the court has... tremendous power, right? The court has the power against both the legislative and the executive branch with the power of judicial review.
They can declare laws constitutional or unconstitutional, right? They can declare executive orders of the president unconstitutional, right? So, and judges cannot be removed by the president if the president doesn't like the way they're voting. But as we'll...
We'll see. There have been times when the president has threatened the court. And those are good, juicy stories. You'll love it when we talk about that.
All right. So you should print this out. And, you know, like I said, keep it available to you.
OK. Article four, as we said, contains the full faith and credit clause. We're going to talk at length about this as well when we talk about federalism, because the full faith and credit clause requires. requires that each state gives full faith and credit to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of other states. And what this means is, so, um...
Let's say you get into a car accident in New York, and the guy who hits you, it's his fault, and you sue him in the New York court, and the New York court orders this guy who hit you to pay you $2,500 in damages, right? But this other guy, he lives in Florida, and he goes back to Florida, and he refuses to pay you. Well, the full faith in credit clause makes the state of Florida enforce that New York judgment against that guy, and you get your money. and this is really important, right?
Because this is a way to solve collective action problems, right? This is so that you don't have to go to Florida and chase that guy for your money and sue him when he wronged you, right? So this is a very important principle. There are other important principles of the full faith and credit clause, right?
Because it says each state must recognize, give full faith and credit to the public acts. of other states. What does that mean?
That means the laws of other states. Well, up until 2015, right, marriage was legal, for example, in Massachusetts, but it was not legal in Alabama. Did I say marriage? Gay marriage, right? So same-sex marriage...
was legal in Massachusetts and in New York up until 2015, but it was not legal up until 2015 in Alabama. So why doesn't Alabama really up until 2013? and we'll get so the US v. Windsor case in 2013 it ruled the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional and to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 5th and 14th Amendment that's a long story, we'll get there eventually and then the Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015 ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment and the 5th Amendment's Due Process Clause. You can't be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. And you have a liberty, a human right, to marry whoever you want.
That is liberty. And the Supreme Court has determined that. But prior to that...
Why then does the full faith and credit clause not apply to gay marriage if there's gay marriage in Massachusetts and there's not gay marriage in Alabama? Why doesn't, well, it takes an act of Congress to define. how the full faith and credit clause will apply or not.
And that's why you have different states. Listen, different states have different values, right? And we'll talk about this when we get there.
We're way over on time right now, so I've got to sort of wrap up this lecture here. So that's the full faith and credit clause, and we're going to talk about that when we talk about the idea of what we call horizontal federalism. Okay, then there's section two of article four. It gives full privileges and immunities to the citizens of each state. Now, what does this mean?
It means if you're a citizen of New York, and let's say you have less rights in New York, but you go to New Jersey, then you have the rights of a New Jerseyan. You have the full privileges and immunities of the citizen of any state that you're in, right? And the states have to give you that.
They can't discriminate against citizens of other states. And we're going to talk about that later, too, because there are some interesting examples there. Also, extradition.
So extradition, you know, if you commit a crime in Florida and you flee to New York and you're captured in New York by authorities, you have to be extradited, sent back to Florida to face the criminal prosecution in Florida. And of course, Section 2 gives no asylum for slaves. So slaves who would escape from the South, from a slave state into a free state, they are not free in the free state. The Constitution.
says they have to be returned back to the slave state and their owners. I even have a problem saying that because it disgusts me. All right. And section three, of course, talks about rules for creating new states. Article five is the amendment process.
It covers how amendments to the Constitution can be made. It's basically by either a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. Congress, or two-thirds vote at constitutional conventions of the state. So two-thirds of the states have to have to pass constitutional conventions.
And since 1787, the Constitution has been amended 27 times. And two of the most important amendments are the 10th Amendment, and we're going to cover that at length. That's called the Reserved Powers Clause. And it basically says, remember how we just went over the enumerated...
powers? Well, the enumerated powers are the powers of Congress, right? We talked about that. So what does the Tenth Amendment say? The Tenth Amendment says any powers that are not exclusively or any powers that are not specifically enumerated to the federal government, but are not denied and forbidden for the states to have, then the states automatically have that power.
I'll say that again. Any power, whatever power you can think of, if it's not specifically given to the national government, but it's also not forbidden for the states to have, then the states automatically have that power. That power is reserved to the states.
And we will, don't worry if you're not getting any of this now. This is a quick overview. We're going to go in depth into all of this. Okay. And the 14th amendment.
Amendment, many will argue this is the most important component of the Constitution. I'm going to stick with Article 1, Section 8. Don't forget about Article 1, Section 8. It's the most important. But the 14th Amendment is almost about as important. The 14th Amendment, and we'll get to why.
This is not going to make sense as to why it's important now, but it will make sense when we cover civil rights. The 14th Amendment says you are a dual. citizen. You are a citizen of the United States, but you're also a citizen of the state in which you reside within the United States. So if you live in New York, you are a citizen of New York, but you're also a citizen of the United States.
Okay, so again, this is just showing the number of times the amendment process was used. I don't think it's terribly relevant. Article 6 is all about constitutional supremacy, right?
Article 6, we sort of went over already, and again, we're going to go in-depth later on as well. It states that the Constitution is supreme. Constitution is fundamental law, what we call constitutional law.
No law in the country can violate the Constitution. The Constitution is supreme. Article 6 also transfers the debt of...
of the states under the Articles of Confederation to the new national government. And we'll have a conversation as to why that's important. Because as we'll see, I have not exactly indicated it yet, but the states are supposed to be sovereign.
The states are strong too, right? We said that. And so is the national government.
But over time, the power of the national government has grown. And one of the reasons for that... is because the national government makes the states behave by giving them money.
And I'll explain more about that later. So the Supremacy Clause, again, another clause, right? Another small grammatical unit that conveys an idea.
That's what a clause is. The Supremacy Clause, it establishes the Constitution as the supreme law of the land in the United States. And again, since 1787, this Constitution has been...
been amended 27 times. And what's my last slide here? Okay. So there's an argument in your book, and they cover McCulloch versus Maryland a little bit early for my taste in the book.
But it basically argues that the national government is really supreme over the states. Um, so this is one of my gripes against the book. I love Christine Barber.
I think she's a wonderful scholar, but I think that this is a wrong interpretation. McCulloch versus Maryland, we're going to cover it next lecture as well, but it's basically this. The national government sets up a national bank in Maryland.
And like any other institution that's established in Maryland at this time, they have to pay taxes. But this national bank does not pay taxes. And so officials from the state of Maryland go to see the clerk of the national bank in Baltimore.
And his name is McCulloch. That's why it's McCulloch versus Maryland. And they say, look, you have to pay your taxes here. And McCulloch says, the federal, the national government does not have to pay taxes to the state, and we are not paying taxes to the state. And so they go to court over this.
And the court rules on the side of the national government basically saying that the power to tax is the power to destroy. That's a very famous saying. And again, we're going to cover this again.
repeat this, but the power to tax is the power to destroy. And what this is getting at is, if you have the power to tax, if the state of Maryland has the power to tax a national institution, then they could technically raise the taxes so high that they could tax that institution out of existence, right? And the states do not have that power.
The states do not have that power to eliminate national government institutions. Right? Because both are supposed to be sovereign.
And so I disagree with this interpretation, but your book says it. that the national government is stated as being supreme here, I'm going to disagree. You know, what this is saying is that Maryland cannot destroy a federal institution.
But you know what? And there's no federal, the federal government cannot destroy a state institution either, by the way. Right?
So this goes both ways, and that's why I mention this, because your book kind of brings it up a little bit early, and I would dispute the interpretation of this. So like I said, not everything that you see in your book is agreed upon as the proper way to interpret it. So ratification requires the approval of nine of the 13 states. That's an interesting story unto itself, because New York almost didn't ratify it, and if that happened, well, the Constitution might not have been ratified, actually.
And then there's the amendments, the Bill of Rights. So we are going to cover the Bill of Rights. the Bill of Rights at length.
I hope that you are now going on to Chapter 3, and we will pick up next lecture and talk in depth about what this federal government actually is and what does federalism actually mean, right? So, you know, how do we divide up power between the national government and the state governments, right? Because what we're doing here is we're attempting to solve collective action problems through these institutions that we create through the Constitution, right?
And we have to balance the transaction costs and the conformity costs, of course, right, in solving these collective action problems. But we have to also ensure that there's not tyranny of the majority against the minority. And with that, I will see you guys in the next lecture.