The United States Constitution

The United States Constitution

PAGE CONTENTS:

Some Stuff About the Constitution

The Fourth Amendment

Top 6 Items You Might Not Know Were in the Constitution

Does the Constitution Really Guarantee Privacy?

The Father of the Bill of Rights

Some Stuff About the Constitution

It is easy to forget that there were six years between the end of the American Revolution and the ratification of the new Constitution. In between America followed the Articles of Confederation. However, when the Articles proved to weak to solve major problems facing America, many leaders met secretly on May 25, 1787 to either fix or replace the Articles. Key individuals like Jefferson and Henry were not present. The result of this Constitutional Convention was the U.S. Constitution.

Only 12 of the 13 original states actually took part in writing the US Constitution. Rhode Island did not attend the Constitutional Convention though they eventually were the last state to ratify the document in 1790.

On June 21, 1788, the U.S. Constitution became effective when the ninth state, New Hampshire, ratified it.

The Constitution contains 4,543 words, including the signatures and has four sheets, 28-3/4 inches by 23-5/8 inches each. It contains 7,591 words including the 27 amendments.

George Washington and James Madison were the only presidents who signed the Constitution.

Vermont ratified the Constitution on January 10, 1791, even though it had not yet become a state.
The only other language used in various parts of the Constitution is Latin.

The oldest person to sign the Constitution was Benjamin Franklin (81). The youngest was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (26).

The President's Cabinet is not mentioned in the Constitution. But George Washington found that he had to consult regularly with the Secretary of State and other heads of major departments, and the Cabinet developed from this practice of the first president.

In 1639, the first constitution in the American colonies, the "Fundamental Orders," was adopted in Hartford, Conn., by representatives of Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford.

Vermont ratified the Constitution on January 10, 1791, even though it had not yet become a state.
The only other language used in various parts of the Constitution is Latin.

The oldest person to sign the Constitution was Benjamin Franklin (81). The youngest was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (26).

Of the typographical errors in the Constitution, the mis-spelling of the word Pensylvania” above the signers’ names probably stands out the most.

The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, ratified, December 15, 1791.

The United States Constitution

September 17 is Constitution Day. On September 17, 1787, the delegates to America's Constitutional Convention ended their work and signed the document that still beats at the heart of American law and government: the U.S. Constitution.

The work wasn't easy. During the convention, the founders took up two very different options for creating "a more perfect union." It took four months to arrive at the brilliant if imperfect compromise that effectively launched a new nation--one born (or at least reborn!) on September 17, 1787. Here's a look at how the founders' options matched up, and how they brought them together.

Option 1: The Virginia Plan

Forget the Articles of Confederation; start over from scratch.
Create a centralized government with the power to assert itself wherever it chooses.
Divide the legislature into two houses.
For each house, make the number of representatives from each state proportional to the state's population.
Let the representatives in each house vote as individuals; don't require them to vote as a single unit.

Option 2: The New Jersey Plan

Revise the Articles of Confederation to create a stronger federal government, but let the states keep significant power.
Make federal laws and treaties superior to state laws and treaties, but keep the powers of the central government strictly circumscribed.
Preserve the one-house legislature created by the Articles of Confederation.
Let each state be represented equally in the legislature, regardless of its population or wealth.
Let states continue to vote as units, so that representatives represent states, not constituencies.

Compromise 1: Centralization

Debate over these two plans ultimately led to three crucial compromises without which "these United States" would never have been what they are.

First, following the Virginia plan, the delegates determined that the Articles of Confederation should be superseded and a new, much stronger central government created. But they also agreed that the federal government's powers should be circumscribed, and not left for the Congress itself to decide.

Compromise 2: Representation

Next, Roger Sherman of Connecticut proposed a compromise worthy of King Solomon. He split the bicameral legislature down the middle, creating a House of Representatives based on proportional representation and a Senate in which each state has exactly two votes.

This so-called "Great Compromise" gave the United States Congress its shape and moved the Constitutional Convention beyond its most serious stalemate. Sadly, it also led directly to the Constitutional Convention's most disturbing decision.

Compromise 3: Dehumanization

Since each state's population determined the number of delegates it would send to the House of Representatives, the framers had to define what they meant by "population." In particular, they had to decide whether slaves would count as people or property.

Ironically, the southern "slave" states stood to benefit, constitutionally, from counting slaves as people (while refusing to treat them as such). As long as slaves were counted but couldn't vote, white southern males would get more representatives responding to their interests. By contrast, northern voters would effectively lose political power by admitting that all people should count as people.

Faced with such a perverse predicament, and unable or unwilling to deal with the fact that the South's "peculiar institution" undercut nearly every ideal they stood for, the framers landed on a dehumanizing compromise. They decided that both taxation and representation should be based on "the whole number of free Persons" plus "three-fifths of all other Persons." Not every compromise is a good one.

--Steve Sampson

The Fourth Amendment

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
--U.S. Constitution, Fourth Amendment

Like much of the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment has deep roots in English common law--especially in the idea that "every man's home is his castle." It has roots in the founders' anger over abuses of power by their old English rulers, too.

But interpreting the amendment today requires you to have more than righteous indignation about a government invasion of your castle. You have to have reasonable expectations.

During colonial days, the British crown regularly issued general warrants--good for the life of the king plus six months--that basically allowed government agents to search any place at any time and to seize anything they found. Among the most hated of these warrants were the "writs of assistance," which empowered customs officials to search colonial homes and businesses for smuggled goods.

After King George II died in 1760, the existing writs expired, and a Boston lawyer named James Otis quit his job to fight the new ones. Otis lost his case, but his arguments inspired America's founders. So they got a new hearing when the framers drafted and debated the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment clearly forbids general warrants. It's less clear about what makes a search "unreasonable." If you read the amendment's two clauses as linked, you might decide that searches are always unreasonable unless they're properly warranted. But if you read the two clauses independently, you might decide that questions about a search's reasonableness are separate from questions about warrants. (Incidentally, James Madison's first draft of the amendment explicitly linked the two clauses.)

The Supreme Court has gone back and forth on this issue--sometimes emphasizing the importance of warrants, sometimes suggesting that the real test is reasonableness, nearly always striving to strike a balance between law enforcement and civil liberties. During the 1970s, the Court leaned toward an "always-get-a-warrant" rule, with few exceptions. More recently, the exceptions have multiplied--though the Court still prefers properly warranted searches.

Exceptions include searching the area around a suspect who's just been arrested, searching a building during an emergency, searching a building while in hot pursuit, seizing evidence that's been left in plain view, searching passengers getting onto airplanes, and searching automobiles. Strangely enough, the automobile exception is key to understanding the Supreme Court's interpretation of the amendment.

The Fourth Amendment promises to secure citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures "in their persons, houses, papers, and effects." It doesn't say anything about automobiles. That may seem a strange point to make, but it wasn't until the 20th century that the Supreme Court clearly stated that "the principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the protection of privacy rather than property."

The amendment grew out of an English common law tradition holding that, as William Pitt put it in 1763, "the poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the crown." Clearly, 18th-century Englishmen enjoyed protections on their own property that they didn't enjoy on the town square. In effect, the same is true for modern Americans--though the key question is no longer whether you own the property but whether you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The inside of your house is private. The inside of a car you drive on public roads and park in public lots is far less so. And, according to the Court, "what a person knowingly exposes to the public . . . is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." That's reserved for things you seek to "preserve as private." The trash you put out on the curb is not protected, but your conversation inside a public phone booth is--if you close the door and keep your voice down.

Basically, when courts consider whether searches and seizures are constitutionally valid, they ask whether the person searched had a reasonable expectation of privacy. If the answer is "no," the search was probably constitutional. If the answer is "yes," the court starts looking at other factors. A properly warranted search is probably reasonable. An unwarranted invasion of your home probably isn't. Outside your home, your right to be left alone is about what you'd expect it to be--and that's hardly black and white.

--Steve Sampson

Top 6 Items You Might Not Know Were in the Constitution

by Martin Kelley

While many of us have studied the Constitution in high school, how many of us remember each of the sections? There are many interesting items tucked away in the words of the Constitution. Here are six interesting items that you might not remember or realize are included in the consitution. Enjoy!

1) Not all votes of the members present need be recorded in the official journal.

"...the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal." In other words, if less than one-fifth want to include the actual votes then they are left out of the official record.

2) Neither House can meet anywhere different without agreement

"Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting."

3) A Congressman cannot be arrested for misdemeanors on the way to the Hill

"[Senators and Representatives] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same...."

4) Congressmen shall not be questioned for speeches in either House

"...and for any Speech or Debate in either House, [Congressmen] shall not be questioned in any other Place." I wonder how many Congressmen have used that defense on CNN or Fox News.

5) No one can be convicted of treason without two witnesses or confession

"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." One person is not enough.

6) The President can adjourn Congress

"[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper." While many people know that the president can call a special session of Congress, it is less well known that he can actually adjuorn them if they disagree about when they want to adjourn.

Does the Constitution Really Guarantee Privacy?

Just how far does the people's right to privacy go? After all, privacy is every U.S. citizen's constitutional right, right?

Well, maybe. The U. S. Constitution never specifically says that citizens have a right to privacy. Yet it does say they have rights that aren't specifically mentioned in the Constitution--and the Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is among them.

How can the Constitution protect rights it never names? Well, the framers were clever fellows. They realized people might read an enumerated list--like, say, the Bill of Rights--and assume the list was supposed to be exhaustive. So, to make sure their list wasn't read that way, they wrote a rule against doing so and added it to the list. That rule is the Constitution's Ninth Amendment, which reads:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Some scholars read those words strictly as a prohibition that prevents the government from doing whatever it wants as long as it doesn't violate your enumerated rights. Others argue they imply positive constitutional protection for one or more unenumerated, yet important, rights--such as the right to defend yourself, the right to move from one place to another, and the right to privacy.

Many of the Constitution's amendments are privacy-related. The First Amendment preserves your right to practice your religion and speak your mind. The Fifth Amendment preserves your right to remain silent and your right to private property. The Fourth Amendment preserves "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

In a 1965 privacy rights case, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that these "various guarantees create zones of privacy." Striking down a Connecticut statute that forbade the use of contraceptives even by married couples, the Court held that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance." (A penumbra is a partly shaded region at the edge of a shadow.)

Basically, the Court held that the spirit of one of the Constitution's amendments, or several together, can cast shadows long enough to cover a right--such as marital privacy--that the Constitution doesn't mention. And, under the Ninth Amemdment, such rights are "retained by the people" without being enumerated. Future rulings extended Griswold's notion of privacy beyond marriage, to strike down fornication and sodomy laws.

Critics of Griswold argue that penumbral privacy rights are a fiction conjured from constitutional shadows. Even some privacy proponents stay away from penumbras, arguing instead that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees privacy by promising not to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Privacy, they say, is essential to liberty.

In fact, the Supreme Court followed that line of reasoning in the most controversial privacy-related case of all: 1973's Roe v. Wade. According to the majority opinion in Roe, "this right of privacy . . . founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." Clearly not everyone agrees with that argument, either.

--Steve Sampson

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The Father of the Bill of Rights

George Mason - The man, not the university

Historians have dubbed him "the father of the Bill of Rights." Thomas Jefferson called him "the wisest man of his generation." And the French philosopher Condorcet said he had earned "the eternal gratitude of mankind."

Born on a Potomac River plantation in 1725, George Mason received little if any formal schooling. Yet his uncle, John Mercer, had one of the best libraries in the colonies, and young George educated himself there. His father died in a boating accident when Mason was just 10, so he took charge of the plantation as soon as he came of age. He would own slaves for the rest of his life, though he later became an outspoken opponent of the institution of slavery.

In 1750, he married Ann Eilbeck, and the couple took up a privileged place in colonial Virginia society. Before Ann's death in 1773, the Masons had 12 children, nine of whom lived to be adults. Meanwhile, George became increasingly involved in local politics--and eventually, the Revolution--despite his preference for private life.

In 1775, when his friend and neighbor George Washington became commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Mason assumed Washington's seat in the Virginia legislature. He was also asked to take Washington's seat at the Second Continental Congress, but refused.

Instead, he took a position on Virginia's Committee of Safety, which was charged with raising a militia and running the colony after the royal governor ran away. In spring 1776, as Virginia's gentlemen tried to figure out how to govern themselves, Mason drafted the document for which he is most famous: the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

"All men are born equally free and independent," the Declaration began, "and have certain inherent rights." Among those rights are "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

The Declaration went on to assert that the power of government is "derived from the people," who retain "an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right" to "reform, alter, or abolish" governments that fail to serve their interest. It also went on to assert freedom of religion and the press, as well as a right to due process of law and trial by jury.

If you're thinking it sounds a lot like the Declaration of Independence, you're right. Jefferson saw Mason's Declaration before finishing his. The Virginia assembly approved Mason's Declaration on June 12, 1776, three weeks before the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. By the end of 1776, five colonies had adopted declarations of rights. By the end of the Revolution, every state had some version of one.

Mason continued to serve Virginia until 1780, when he remarried and retired to his plantation. After that, he joined his fellow founders once more--for the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There, according to James Madison, "the preservation of the rights of the people" was "the pole-star of his political conduct."

Mason argued that the people, not the state legislatures, should have the right to ratify the Constitution. He also argued that a bill of rights should preface the Constitution. "The security of our liberty and happiness is the object we ought to have in view in wishing to establish the union," he argued. "If instead of securing these, we endanger them, the name of the union will be but a trivial consolation."

In the end, Mason was one of only three delegates who refused to sign the proposal of the Constitutional Convention, fearing it was too long on federal powers and too short on individual protections. But his insistence on the centrality of liberty had a lasting effect. It helped lead to the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791. Mason died the following year.

Steve Sampson
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