The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It establishes the United States government, the rights of its people, and the ability for douchebags to correctly proclaim “I have rights, man!” while being arrested.
Before we talk about what the Constitution (capital C) is, we should establish what a constitution (lowercase C) is. A constitution constitutes the laws of a state, how that state’s government will operate, and the relationship between those two. Most countries on Earth has a constitution, but the United States’ is unique in that, at 228 years old, it is the oldest, longest-surviving constitution in the world. If the Constitution is the U.S.’s longest-running program, that’s because it shares an important detail with the U.S.’s second longest-running program The Simpsons: The formula, though it may seem dated at times, still works very well, largely thanks to the strong foundation of its original writers. People called James Madison the Matt Groening of his day.
The Constitution is made up of a Preamble (introduction), which you memorized thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, seven Articles that establish the national government, and 27 amendments. Many of those articles and amendments will get their own explanations in future posts, and this post will describe the Constitution in broad strokes. In the meantime, you can write fan theories about which pop culture references I’ll use to describe the third amendment!
The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and put into effect in 1789. It included the aforementioned preamble, seven articles, and the first ten amendments better known as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, the original constitution that was written in 1776 and adopted in 1777, shortly after the U.S. declared independence. Under the Articles, the central government was pretty weak; the states were loosely tied together and could easily bypass their authority, the Articles had no authority to tax, and individual states engaged in foreign policy. After much debate at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 (originally intended to revise the Articles of Confederation), the Constitution we still use today was proposed and adopted, in a rare instance of the remake being better than the original. Like The Wicker Man!
The original Wicker Man does not have a scene where Nicolas Cage has a cage of bees attack his face. The remake does. Therefore remake > original.
The U.S. Constitution is less about restricting rights than granting them. The Bill of Rights entitles citizens to free speech, speedy trial, and religious liberty, among other things. There is nothing in the Constitution about, say, murder or burglary, unlike those pesky Ten Commandments.
In addition to the national constitution, every state has a constitution. Many of them have a bill of rights as well and overall have more amendments and go even further in protecting the rights of its citizens. State constitutions cannot contradict the national constitution. So state and national law do not operate all that differently from a mom and dad: You ask your mom (in this scenario the US Constitution) if you can play with bottle rockets and she says no. So you ask your dad (state Constitution) if you can play with bottle rockets and he says yes. Just because he said it’s OK, doesn’t mean it is. Then the state constitution has to sleep on the couch because the national constitution found out.
Amendments are changes/additions to the Constitution that we will talk about in greater detail another time. They typically fill in blanks or make corrections that were previously not there or needed to be changed. For example, there was no rule about presidential term limits, theoretically opening the door for a lifetime presidency if someone kept getting elected, until the 22nd Amendment limited presidents to two terms in 1951. This rule, of course, does not apply to members of Congress, many of whom opt for reelection over retirement.
The last, and maybe most important, thing to know about the Constitution is that it derives its power from the people, hence the preamble beginning with “We the people.” By association, then, the government gets its power from the people. It is intended to be a reciprocal relationship in which government’s power is granted from the people, and that government, in turn, protects them. This applies to all U.S. citizens. Including those who attend the Gathering of the Juggalos.
And that, oddly enough, is one of the beauties of the Constitution. It is not intended to serve some more than others, but protect all citizens equally.
The Federal Correspondent 