Magruder's American Government: 3. The Constitution

Immediately, the Constitution establishes a bicameral legislature—that is, a legislature made up of two houses.

The Constitution establishes the Supreme Court and leaves to Congress the creation of the inferior courts—the lower federal courts under the Supreme Court.

The concept of limited government can be put another way: Government must obey the law. Stated this way, the principle is often called constitutionalism—that is, government must be conducted according to constitutional principles.

Congress has the power to make laws, but the President may veto (reject) any act of Congress.

The power of judicial review may be defined as the power of a court to determine the constitutionality of a governmental action.

In part, then, judicial review is the power to declare unconstitutional—to declare illegal, null and void, of no force and effect—a governmental action found to violate some provision in the Constitution.

The principle of federalism—the division of power among a central government and several regional governments—came to the Constitution out of both experience and necessity.

Collectively, the first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.

Each of these amendments arose out of the controversy surrounding the ratification of the Constitution itself.

A treaty, on the other hand, is a formal agreement between two or more sovereign states.

The parties have converted the electoral college, the body that makes the formal selection of the nation’s President, from what the Framers intended into a “rubber stamp” for each State’s popular vote in presidential elections.

By custom, not because the Constitution says so, the heads of the 15 executive departments make up the Cabinet, an advisory body to the President.

The National Government is a government of delegated powers.

The expressed powers are those powers delegated to the National Government in so many words—spelled out, expressly, in the Constitution. Those powers are also sometimes called the “enumerated powers.”

The implied powers are not expressly stated in the Constitution, but they are reasonably suggested—implied—by the expressed powers.

The inherent powers are those powers that belong to the National Government because it is the national government of a sovereign state in the world community.

Recall, the 10th Amendment states that the States are governments of reserved powers. The reserved powers are those powers that the Constitution does not grant to the National Government and does not, at the same time, deny to the States.

Most of the powers that the Constitution delegates to the National Government are exclusive powers. That is, they can be exercised only by the National Government; they cannot be exercised by the States under any circumstances.

Some of the powers delegated to the National Government are concurrent powers. That is, they are powers that both the National Government and the States possess and exercise.

Perhaps the best known examples of this intergovernmental cooperation are the many federal grants -in-aid programs—grants of federal money or other resources to the States and their cities, counties, and other local units.

No State can enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation, says the Constitution. However, the States can, with the consent of Congress, enter into interstate compacts—agreements among themselves and with foreign states.

There are several interstate compacts that all 50 States have signed onto, such as the Compact for the Supervision of Parolees and Probationers and the Compact on Juveniles. These two compacts enable States to share important law-enforcement data.

This clause refers to extradition, the legal process by which a fugitive from justice in one State can be returned to that State. Extradition is designed to prevent a person from escaping justice by fleeing a State.

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

This clause, known as the Privileges and Immunities Clause, means that no State can draw unreasonable distinctions between its own residents and those persons who happen to live in another State.