The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world.
Article One of the Constitution of the United States establishes the legislative branch of the federal government, the United States Congress. Under Article One, Congress is a bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Article One grants Congress various enumerated powers and the ability to pass laws "necessary and proper" to carry out those powers. Article One also establishes the procedures for passing a bill and places various limits on the powers of Congress and the states from abusing their powers.
The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution places restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, forbidding the practice in peacetime. The amendment was a response to the Quartering Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the buildup to the American Revolutionary War, which had allowed the British Army to lodge soldiers in public buildings.
The Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. This amendment codifies the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases and inhibits courts from overturning a jury's findings of fact.
The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses rights, retained by the people, that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. It is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment was introduced during the drafting of the Bill of Rights when some of the American founders became concerned that future generations might argue that, because a certain right was not listed in the Bill of Rights, it did not exist. However, the Ninth Amendment has rarely played any role in U.S. constitutional law, and until the 1980s was often considered "forgotten" or "irrelevant" by many legal academics.
The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution states that any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of Congress may take effect only after the next election of the House of Representatives has occurred. It is the most recently adopted amendment but was one of the first proposed.
The 1st United States Congress, comprising the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, met from March 4, 1789, to March 4, 1791, during the first two years of George Washington's presidency, first at Federal Hall in New York City and later at Congress Hall in Philadelphia. With the initial meeting of the First Congress, the United States federal government officially began operations under the new frame of government established by the 1787 Constitution. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the provisions of Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, of the Constitution. Both chambers had a Pro-Administration majority. Twelve articles of amendment to the Constitution were passed by this Congress and sent to the states for ratification; the ten ratified as additions to the Constitution on December 15, 1791, are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, with an additional amendment ratified more than two centuries later to become the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Article Seven of the United States Constitution sets the number of state ratifications necessary for the Constitution to take effect and prescribes the method through which the states may ratify it. Under the terms of Article VII, constitutional ratification conventions were held in each of the thirteen states, with the ratification of nine states required for the Constitution to take effect. Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, doing so on December 7, 1787. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, ensuring that the Constitution would take effect. Rhode Island was the last state to ratify the Constitution under Article VII, doing so on May 29, 1790.
United States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are distributed among the 50 states according to the most recent decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. After each state is assigned one seat in the House, most states are then apportioned a number of additional seats which roughly corresponds to its share of the aggregate population of the 50 states. Every state is constitutionally guaranteed two seats in the Senate and at least one seat in the House, regardless of population.
The United States Constitution has served as the supreme law of the United States since taking effect in 1789. The document was written at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and was ratified through a series of state conventions held in 1787 and 1788. Since 1789, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; particularly important amendments include the ten amendments of the United States Bill of Rights and the three Reconstruction Amendments.
Federalist No. 84 is a political essay by American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, the eighty-fourth and penultimate essay in a series known as The Federalist Papers. It was published July 16, July 26, and August 9, 1788, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. The official title of the work is "Certain General and Miscellaneous Objections to the Constitution Considered and Answered". Federalist 84 is best known for its opposition to a Bill of Rights, a viewpoint with which the work's other author, James Madison, disagreed. Madison's position eventually won out in Congress, and a Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791.
Federalist Paper No. 54 is an essay by James Madison, the fifty-fourth of The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on February 12, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist papers were published.
The Taxing and Spending Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, grants the federal government of the United States its power of taxation. While authorizing Congress to levy taxes, this clause permits the levying of taxes for two purposes only: to pay the debts of the United States, and to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. Taken together, these purposes have traditionally been held to imply and to constitute the federal government's taxing and spending power.
The Apportionment Act of 1792 was the first Apportionment Act passed by the United States Congress on April 10, 1792, and signed into law by President George Washington on April 14, 1792. The Act set the number of members of the United States House of Representatives at 105, effective with the 3rd Congress on March 4, 1793, and established that a number of representatives would be allotted to each state based on the population enumeration provided by the 1790 Census. The final apportionment, which was not part of the Act itself, was on the basis of "the ratio of one for every thirty-three thousand persons in the respective States", and used the Jefferson method which required fractional remainders to be ignored when calculating each state's total number of representatives. This apportionment method continued to be used until the 1830 census. After discarding the remainders, the average population of congressional districts was 34,436 persons.
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and Magna Carta (1215).
The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of Confederation. It ended on September 17, 1787, the day the Frame of Government drafted by the convention's delegates to replace the Articles was adopted and signed. The ratification process for the Constitution began that day, and ended when the final state, Rhode Island, ratified it on May 29, 1790.
The Origination Clause, sometimes called the Revenue Clause, is Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution. The clause says that all bills for raising revenue must start in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the U.S. Senate may propose or concur with amendments, as in the case of other bills.
The Fayetteville Convention was a meeting by 271 delegates from North Carolina to ratify the US Constitution. Governor Samuel Johnston presided over the convention, which met in Fayetteville, North Carolina, from November 16 to 23, 1789 to debate on and decide on the ratification of the Constitution, which had recommended to the states by the Philadelphia Convention during the summer of 1787. The delegates ratified the Constitution by a vote of 194 to 77, thus making North Carolina the 12th state to ratify the constitution.
The first election for Virginia's 5th congressional district took place on February 2, 1789, for a two-year term to commence on March 4 of that year. In a race that turned on the candidates' positions on the need for amendments to the recently ratified U.S. Constitution, James Madison defeated James Monroe for a place in the House of Representatives of the First Congress. It is the only congressional election in U.S. history in which two future presidents opposed each other.
James Madison was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the 4th president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Disillusioned by the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution. Madison's Virginia Plan served as the basis for the Constitutional Convention's deliberations, and he was one of the most influential individuals at the convention. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution, and he joined with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays that was one of the most influential works of political science in American history.
