hello everybody and welcome to a new topic in my a level politics series today we're going to start some of our unit 3 work component 3 work and we are going to be looking at the us of a and to start we will be looking at the u.s constitution and i've just gone straight to the spec and we are going to look at 1.1 the nature of the us constitution so this is kind of an introduction to the constitution right so the nature of the constitution and this is what what the the specs as you need to know the vagueness of the document codification entrenchment the constitutional framework powers of the us branches of government the amendment process including advantages and disadvantages of the formal process and hopefully by the end of this video you'll have a pretty decent idea on all of those so the american constitution was written by the founding fathers following the uh their success in the war of independence the founding fathers were a group of men who were selected from the original 13 states to lay the foundation uh for this new country and they came from um the different parts of america and there were a number of them who were slave owners and there were some of them who weren't and they they had different ideas about how things should work and they kind of hammered it out and they came up with their different ideas and the people doing this included george washington uh benjamin franklin obviously he was hugely key uh james madison alexander hamilton you may well have seen the musical um not all of it is necessarily historical fact um but again a really interesting way of getting into uh what was going on in america at this point in time the portrayal of george george in that king george is particularly excellent i think right so if we look at the us constitution there are seven articles the first article um sets out the powers of congress so that's the senate and house of representatives and they are what is known as the legislature so they make laws uh article two sets out the power the executive powers of the president the president is the head of the executive and their the job of the president and the federal bureaucracy that work for him is to carry out those laws uh and this is a kind of a key part of government it is separated from the legislative powers which lie with the house of representatives and the senate the third article says that the power the judicial power is now vested in the supreme court and then any of the inferior courts which means lower down courts that congress might create so the judicial power the judicial branch of government again is separate from the other two and so the judging of those laws and interpreting the constitution those powers lie with the supreme court so we've got the three key aspects of american government set there they are separate they have their powers and their role specified and given to them in the constitution article 4 deals with the relationship between federal government and state government and who has what powers and how they they interact this has been one of the most controversial areas of the american constitution through american history and often we we find the the different parties disagreeing very strongly on this and the first the first party system uh in america saw that very much with the federalists and the anti-federalists and again if you watched hamilton you might have picked up on a little bit of that in terms of one side wanted a strong federal government on the other side didn't and and there was a little bit in terms of the vagueness of the constitution it's not 100 percent clear article five set out of the amendment procedure which we'll look at a bit later in the video in terms of how the constitution can be changed and the short answer that is with great difficulty and then there's miscellaneous uh provisions of article six but one there's a really important bit there which is the supremacy clause which is about the fact that constitutional law is supreme that it is more significant more important than other laws and therefore if it clashes with other laws then those other laws are null and void and the constitutional law holds and article 7 was the ratification process to how you how the constitution as created would be turned into the actual constitution of the states and it passing through the different states around america 13 of them were as they were at that time so some key features of the constitution so it is a codified constitution it is written down if i say to you go and find me a copy of the american constitution you can go and do it if i tell you to go and find me the british constitution that normally a sign i don't like you very much because i've just given you an impossible task so in that way it is very different so you can go and you again to do your actual work in regulation you can certainly you can study the american constitution you can sit down and read through the articles of the powers uh that are given to congress and article two and look at the powers that are given to the president article three looking at the powers of the um of the supreme court the provisions of the constitution are what is known as entrenched that means they are hard to change and we'll look at that in a bit more detail and there's a blend of things which are really specific this this person has this power this organization has this power and some of it is a little bit vague and that vagueness is actually really important because a codified entrenched constitution they normally have a bit of a sell-by date they don't normally last the hundreds of years because times change and therefore what what is required changes but the american constitution has had just that right degrees people would argue with flexibility in it and a lot of that comes from some of the vagueness that meant that it has survived the enormous changes of the uh over 200 years since it was created right so vagueness and specific specificity i can't say that word right so what we're looking at we've got the implied powers um so this this is one of the things that has a bit of vagueness to it so these are powers that federal government has has by inference um not not actually specifically given to and i explicitly mentioned in the constitution but to do the stuff that is specifically mentioned in the constitution we think well they got to have the power to do that to be able to do that and sometimes there's discussion and argument about that there's something about the constitution which talks about the reserved powers and this comes out the tenth amendment and essentially what it says is that unless the constitution in the article specifically gives the federal government a particular power or prohibits the states from doing it then that power should fall to the states and to the people there are some some powers and again this causes difficulty and causes a bit of vagueness that are concurrent so the powers that are held by the federal government and the state governments at the same time and we tend to then get overlap and kind of arguments about jurisdiction and you might see this sometimes if you watch american crime dramas where you'll have people from federal bodies and people from state bodies argue about who has jurisdiction over a crime scene or something like that and that's because we've got concurrent powers running alongside now there are some bits that are really specific so for example congress has the power to collect taxes so it collects taxes it has the power to coin money so it is it is congress that is uh oversees the printing of money in america um there is some stuff that really does cause a bit of confusion this bit i think particularly clashes with the reserve powers element of it there's something that's known as the necessary and proper clause which is in article one section eight so that says congress is empowered to make all laws necessary and proper to carry out the federal government's duties and this is where we get into this kind of implied powers and and and it really does give the federal government quite a degree of flexibility in terms of what it can step in and do um and it means this powerful federal government can be stretched so where does the necessary and proper clause end and the reserves powers for the states begin and again this is something where there's been an awful lot of argument over the last couple of hundred years in america over this uh and there are those who worry about the power of um federal government and they have a tendency to win where where tin foil hats and go and hide in the countryside and there are those who want a more powerful strong federal government and are more worried about what happens at state level so we we've got the beginning of a debate and beginning of an argument so the american constitution in some ways is really crystal clear because it's all written down and you go and read it and go well no the president doesn't have that power or does have that power but sometimes this bit with federal and state power with the necessary proper uh clause clause from article 1 section 8 and reserve power powers that are set out in the 10th amendment these things don't necessarily fit perfectly and so there is gray areas which which can be debated and argued about right so as i said the american constitution is codified this means it's kind of is is systematic it's an authoritative collection of rules that are written in a single document uh it sets out the rules for how american government and politics work um the constitution has a supremacy clause that means the constitution is supreme law of the land it takes precedent over all other laws so so if some the supreme court says that law contravenes the constitution then that law is struck off whether it was made by federal government or state government or whatever uh the constitution delegates powers to different parts of government this is the other idea of the constitution being supreme in america because it is article one that tells congress what it can do is article two that tells the president what it can do it's article three that tells um the supreme court what it can do those those powers are given to those organizations by the constitution right it is entrenched as i said earlier very simply but this just means it's really hard to change um entrenchment suggests and if you think about this in military terms it means a really strongly defended position which is very difficult to move somebody out of and essentially what this that that's what the the founding fathers did with the the amendment procedure is is they entrench the constitution it is really hard to change it uh and there were ten amendments to the constitution and not long after it was written so in 1789 there were the first ten amendments they're known as the bill of rights we have now only reached a total of 27 so there's been 17 amendments since that three of those were the civil war amendment so ending of slavery and gaining of equal citizenship and the right to vote um two of them were bringing in and then removing prohibition a lot a lot those are to do with who can vote and restricting presidential terms so there's not a huge amount that's changed over these uh these 200 nod years and some people say this is a wonderfully positive thing because there are some really important stuff in the constitution that people don't want to see it being eroded and other people say what it means is you end up with archaic laws so how how do you amend the constitution as i said that the short answer is with great difficulty the long answer is like this so you need the needed to you need to be proposed and ratified so for a successful proposing of an amendment you need two thirds of both houses of congress in our first method method and then three quarters of the state legislatures to agree and that is the system that has basically been used the 26 of the 27 amendments went through that way uh you could have um two thirds of both houses of congress proposing a an amendment it could be ratified by three quarters of the states in each state could have its own convention and this has been used once which is the 21st amendment which was the ending of prohibition now you could have legislators uh of two-thirds of the states calling for a national convention and then um three-quarters of state literature's uh then uh backing that up that's never been used you could have the state registers of two thirds of the states calling for a national convention and then at that that convention uh ratifying it through three courses of the states and um that one's never been used either so we're really looking at the top one which is the one the way that it works which is two thirds of the houses of congress and then three quarters of state legislatures that has once when it's been done through a convention the other two theoretically could be used but just haven't right so why is the um the amendment process a good one why is it a good idea well it what it means is you need super majority so you need two thirds in in the houses of congress you need three quarters of the states that means an amendment needs overwhelming support so you don't get things through that are the whim of a small major small majority of people at a given moment of time uh it should mean the the the the rights of significant minorities are protected and it also means that because it's a lengthy and complicated um process it should stop kind of short-term whim short-term fads short-term kind of flares of popularity for something um being being passed over so for example something like um brexit in the uk when we we had was it 52 of people in favor of doing something quite significant in terms of leaving the eu in the american system that just wouldn't fly they go well actually if it's that's entrenched in in how our country runs then you need an awful lot more than 52 um to change it and you can see why that might be a really good thing because when we've had we did have that major change based on a vote of 52 it did cause a huge outcry and it did cause a lot of difficulty there's no if you get an amendment through there's no doubt that this is a popular idea that most people wanted it and it also means that things need to be agreed at both the federal and state level so again this suggests we've got a really broad base of support it's not just something that has been dreamed up in washington and the the the people in washington is a great idea it has to go out across the whole of the states so in this it looks it looks really firm it looks like a really good idea that you are getting good decisions made by the vast vast majority of the population the cancer this is well actually they just made it too difficult to change and that means well yes it stops people getting rid of the good but it also means that the bad is also entrenched and examples that people have given of this and is is for example the electoral college which is the rather old system used to elect presidents which if you remember the last presidential election trump didn't actually win a majority of the votes but he won in a majority in the electoral college because of the way it's calculated in different states with the the value being the member the number of members of the house representatives you've got plus the two sentences that you've got it disproportionately um represents the small states um and it shouldn't be the case that you you you've not got the same winner as it would happen with the popular vote a lot of people argue but that is in the constitution so you could change it but it'd be really hard again one the the we we talk about a lot in the uk is the second amendment which you kind of look at and go why would you have that in modern day society and that's going to cause a huge number of problems but the whole thing of dealing with the right to bear arms is is not an impossible because there are there are significant groups of people who support it as an idea and it is in the constitution so changing it is really really hard um the minority can and that might be a good example of it a minority can frustrate the will of the majority so if you essentially got more than a quarter of the states you don't like something then it's just not going to happen if you've got more than a third in one of the two houses who don't like something it's not going to happen you can attack the idea that it stops kind of short-term trends or or short-term movements um changing the the constitution because we did get prohibition in the united states in 1918 it didn't last very long it was taken out uh just a few years later so this idea that it means that if something be flare a flare in popularity of an idea or something in a short period of time it won't it won't change the constitution is too lengthy and difficult well the prohibition example is the counter that's thrown at that uh the fact that that the constitution is so difficult to amend has meant that interpretation has become incredibly important and that power lies with the unelected supreme court and you can argue that it over time has given the supreme court excessive power so which is why the appointment supreme court justices is something that uh that is seen as such a massive issue in the states and that there's between more conservative judges and more liberal judges and we've seen the balance of the court um it's shifting a bit under trump and this the last bit that reflects on something i said with the electoral college again is small states are massively overrepresented so if you're looking for three quarters of the states to agree well alaska's vote counts the same as california and if you look at the difference in population between those two states it's absolutely gigantic so again in some ways that appears to be ridiculous now you could say well california will have more of a say in in the house of representatives but alaska then gets the same say in the senate and the same stay in the the state stage of ratification so it's not a perfect system but it does mean that the um things are pretty strongly entrenched and that that you can see is a real positive because there's an awful lot of good stuff in there which can't be taken away right so on our on this bit we've we've got this kind of um constitutional framework with different branches of government so you've got the legislature which is congress you've got the executive that which is the president and then you've got the judiciary which is headed by the supreme court now the system is based on these ideas of checks and balances and the separation of the powers of these three elements of government so power is not concentrated in the hands of one institution or one individual but is spread across the three and those three act as checks and balances on each other so a president is a check on congress because he he can veto uh the bills that they pass he can check the power of the supreme court by nominating new judges when a a position becomes available and also we've seen this um really very much in the news over recent uh recent times they can issue pardons so roger stone for example being pardoned by trump so the government the judicial system can go through and try someone can and convict them and then the president can just turn around and go i pardon them and that's done within that power so but the president doesn't get his own way because congress can check the power of the cr the the president um so they can either amend or delay or reject a a law or an idea that the president proposes they can override the veto of the president if they've got a two-thirds majority uh in both houses to do that so a president can go right okay um i vetoed that you can't have that as a law and congress can go back and go well actually we can because more than two-thirds of us agree that we should and they use can use the power of the purse and so that is when they can withhold the budget they control the purse strings do congress and the president can't do much without any money and we see again we've seen this a number of times both under trump and over obama where everything comes to a grinding halt because congress doesn't agree with the president on spending ideas they can irritate the president by not approving presidential appointments or they could refuse to ratify his their treaties and also they can impeach the president and we we've seen a lot of this with trump we've seen the the failed attempt at an impeachment trial uh we have seen um congress trying to block some of his appointments and and then finally we've got a supreme court and the supreme court can check the laws of congress by deeming any law that they pass to be unconstitutional and they can check the power of the president by by um ruling that some of their actions are unconstitutional so we've got these three distinct areas of government we don't have that mixture that we have in the uk so the cabinet and the president don't sit in um don't say it in the legislature so he's got that they are separate the president is elected separately to the the the elections going at the same time there is a separate election um the the president chooses their own cabinet and they can choose them from anywhere apart from from within congress and again so we've got these three things they work sometimes against each other and at that point you can get gridlocked but the idea of it is to mean that power is spread and that we should get uh different parts of government working together for the common good right i hope you found that really helpful and giving you a good introduction introduction to the the american constitution again you're going to need to go away do a bit more reading a bit more work bit more research in in to find out a bit more about it but that should give you a nice firm starting point please remember to like leave me some comments and if you haven't done so already please subscribe and support the channel and get notifications when more of these videos come down right thank you very much for watching i'll speak to you again soon