US Constitution Flashcards
How many amendments to the constitution are there? Explain significance
27 - shows a difficulty to change, but also that they have come from issues
What is Article 1 of the constitution?
Legislature (Congress) - divided into Senate (upper, 100) and HoR (lower, 435)
What is Article 2 of the constitution?
Executive (President and VP) - elected every 4 years by electoral constitution
What is Article 3 of the constitution?
Judiciary (SCOTUS) - 9 Justices, can strike down law
What is Article 4 of the constitution?
States reserved powers
What is significant about Article 4 and Amendment 10?
Establishes the principle of federalism together
What is federalism?
Powers that are shared and enshrined in the constitution
What do enumerated powers mean?
Powers that come explicitly from the constitution - relates to article 1,2,3
What is a difference between Congress and the Commons?
Senate and HoR must live in the state they represent, unlike Commons with a weaker constituency link
What is the nature of the US constitution?
Codified, entrenched, vague and specific
What are the principles of the US constitution?
Federalism, separation of the powers, checks and balances, bipartisanship, limited gov
How are amendments of the constitution passed?
Two super majorities (2/3) in both houses, then ratification (3/4) by the 50 states
How many amendments have there been to the constitution in the last 200 years?
15, but over 11,000 have been introduced
what are the advantages of the amendment process?
-preserves federalism
-requres bipartisanship
-prevents tyranny from a single-party
-gives proper time for debate
-requres a consensus
-helps uphold some principles of democracy that needs protection
what are the disadvantages of the amendment process?
-difficult to remove outdated laws
-voices of small population states are over-represented
-difficult to incorporate new ideas eg equality
-SC have excessive power to create interpretive amendments
What are the Implied powers?
powers the federal government has that are not written down but are implied from the wording
Article 1, Section 8
Necessary and proper clause (elastic clause)
Vagueness of constitution- Name the cases
Gibbons v Ogden(national bank proper and nessiciary) and McCulloch v Maryland(commerce clause)
What is the supremacy clause?
Found in article 4 - national law is supreme and supersedes any state law.
What are concurrent powers?
They are powers shared by the federal and state eg taxation
What are the two types of SC judges?
loose constructionist - Wider than just the text to fit with the modern era
Strict constructionist - literal wording must be explicitly stated (they use originalism)
What is originalism?
The approach to interpreting the constitution with its official meaning
What are advantages of the Vaugeness of the constitution?
- Allows the constitution to be updated without going through the rigid formal amendment prosess
- The vagueness allowed the US Constitution to withstand test of time
What are the disadvantages of the vagueness of the constitution?
- The Constitution could fail to regulate political practice
- SC could become too powerful
- There could be significant conflict with either side claiming there view is right
What are the enumerated powers?
powers that are clearly listed in the US constitution
