The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame and constraints of government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby 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 today.
Article One of the United States Constitution 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 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.
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined the scope of the U.S. Congress's legislative power and how it relates to the powers of American state legislatures. The dispute in McCulloch involved the legality of the national bank and a tax that the state of Maryland imposed on it. In its ruling, the Supreme Court established firstly that the "Necessary and Proper" Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. federal government certain implied powers necessary and proper for the exercise of the powers enumerated explicitly in the Constitution, and secondly that the American federal government is supreme over the states, and so states' ability to interfere with the federal government is restricted. Since the legislature has the authority to tax and spend, the court held that it therefore has authority to establish a national bank, as being "necessary and proper" to that end.
The Necessary and Proper Clause, also known as the Elastic Clause, is a clause in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution:
The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Federalism in the United States is the constitutional division of power between U.S. state governments and the federal government of the United States. Since the founding of the country, and particularly with the end of the American Civil War, power shifted away from the states and toward the national government. The progression of federalism includes dual, cooperative, and new federalism.
Federalist No. 14 is an essay by James Madison titled "Objections to the Proposed Constitution From Extent of Territory Answered". This essay is the fourteenth of The Federalist Papers. It was first published in The New York Packet on November 30, 1787 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist papers were published. It addresses a major objection of the Anti-Federalists to the proposed United States Constitution: that the sheer size of the United States would make it impossible to govern justly as a single country. Madison touched on this issue in Federalist No. 10 and returns to it in this essay.
Federalist No. 33, written by Alexander Hamilton and first published in The Independent Journal on January 2, 1788, continues the focus on the issues in creating an efficient taxation system, along with reassuring the people's doubts about the government control over taxation. Titled "The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation", No. 33 explores the idea of allowing Congress to make all laws that are necessary for efficiently operating the national government. Under the pseudonym, Publius, John Jay, Hamilton, and James Madison collectively wrote and published eighty-five essays in the New York newspaper between 1787 and 1788 to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution.
Federalist No. 41, titled "General View of the Powers Conferred by the Constitution", is an essay written by James Madison as the forty-first of The Federalist Papers. These essays were published by Alexander Hamilton, with John Jay and James Madison serving as co-authors, under the pseudonym "Publius." No. 41 was first published by The New York Packet on January 19, 1788 and argues about the necessity of the powers the Constitution vested upon the general government as well as the meaning of the phrase "general welfare".
Federalist No. 43 is an essay by James Madison, the forty-third of The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on January 23, 1788, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist papers were published. This paper continues a theme begun by Madison in Federalist No. 42. It is titled "The Same Subject Continued: The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered".
Federalist No. 47 is the forty-seventh paper from The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on January 30, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published, but its actual author was James Madison. This paper examines the separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government under the proposed United States Constitution due to the confusion of the concept at the citizen level. It is titled "The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts".
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.
Federalist No. 55 is an essay by James Madison, the fifty-fifth of The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on February 13, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. It is titled "The Total Number of House of Representatives". It is the first of four papers defending the number of members in the House of Representatives against the critics who believe the number of members to be inadequate. The critics presume that there aren't enough representatives to defend the country against the small group of legislators who are violating the rights of the people. In this paper, Madison examines the size of the United States House of Representatives.
Federalist No. 57 is an essay by James Madison, the fifty-seventh of The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on February 19, 1788, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist papers were published. It is titled "The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many".
Federalist No. 59 is an essay by Alexander Hamilton, the fifty-ninth of The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on February 22, 1788, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. This is the first of three papers discussing the power of Congress over the election of its own members, the other two papers in this series being Federalist No. 60 and Federalist No. 61. The title of the paper is "Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members".
Federalist No. 66 is an essay by Alexander Hamilton, the sixty-sixth of The Federalist Papers. It was published on March 8, 1788, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist papers were published. The title is "Objections to the Power of the Senate To Set as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered".
Federalist No. 76, written by Alexander Hamilton, was published on April 1, 1788. The Federalist Papers are a series of eighty-five essays written to urge the ratification of the United States Constitution. These letters were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the name of Publius in the late 1780s. This paper discusses the arrangement of the power of appointment and the system of checks and balances. The title is "The Appointing Power of the Executive", and is the tenth in a series of 11 essays discussing the powers and limitations of the Executive branch. There are three options for entrusting power: a single individual, a select congregation, or an individual with the unanimity of the assembly. Hamilton supported bestowing the president with the nominating power but the ratifying power would be granted to the senate in order to have a process with the least bias.
The Legal Tender Cases were two 1871 United States Supreme Court cases that affirmed the constitutionality of paper money. The two cases were Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis.
A general welfare clause is a section that appears in many constitutions and in some charters and statutes that allows that the governing body empowered by the document to enact laws to promote the general welfare of the people, which is sometimes worded as the public welfare. In some countries, it has been used as a basis for legislation promoting the health, safety, morals, and well-being of the people governed by it.
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the "supreme Law of the Land", and thus take priority over any conflicting state laws. It provides that state courts are bound by, and state constitutions subordinate to, the supreme law. However, federal statutes and treaties must be within the parameters of the Constitution; that is, they must be pursuant to the federal government's enumerated powers, and not violate other constitutional limits on federal power, such as the Bill of Rights—of particular interest is the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that the federal government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution.
