U N I T E D S TAT E S The constitution of the United States, the oldest written constitution still in use, was a novelty

when it took e∑ect in 1789. It created a set of rules for governing a nation—out of reach of
change by ordinary legislation—and a unique division of power among the federal government,
state governments, and the people. Today, with only twenty-seven amendments, the U.S.
constitution remains a source of inspiration for people throughout the world.

General Information The United States of America occupies approximately 9.6 million square kilometers. Its
forty-eight contiguous states on the North American continent are bounded by Canada on
the north, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Mexico on the south, and the Pacific Ocean on the
west. The state of Alaska lies on the West Coast, north of Canada, and the state of Hawaii
consists of a group of islands in the north Pacific Ocean. The United States also has island
territories and possessions, including the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean
Sea and American Samoa and Guam in the Pacific Ocean. Washington, District of
Columbia, is the federal capital of this country of over 300 million persons.
The United States is the most economically productive country in the world and has
generally experienced long-term economic growth since its inception. It is a nation of
ethnic and religious diversity resulting from waves of worldwide immigration. Since the fall
of the Soviet Union, the United States may be considered the world’s only true superpower
both militarily and economically. However, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
in New York City and the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., in 2001, and the subsequent
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by American and coalition forces have changed both the
internal and geopolitical dynamics of the country.

Type of Government: Presidential federal republic, with a president and cabinet, a bicameral
legislature, and a judiciary

Dates of Constitutions: 1781 (Articles of Confederation) and 1789

Constitutional History The first Americans apparently came to the continent of North America from Asia via a land
bridge to the Alaska Peninsula tens of thousands of years ago. While there is some evidence
that Europeans and Africans made contact with North America earlier, the discovery of land
on the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean by Christopher Columbus in 1492 had the
most profound e∑ect on both the New and the Old Worlds.
The wave of European immigration five hundred years ago found Native American civi-
lizations living in harmony with the ecology, if not always with each other. The indigenous
peoples spoke approximately 1,200 languages or dialects, but in the eastern half of North
America there were three major language groups: the Algonquians in the north, the Musko-
geans farther south and west, and the Iroquois both around the eastern Great Lakes and in
Georgia, where a dialect was spoken by the Cherokee. Although the European concept of
individual land ownership was foreign to the Native Americans, some—for example, the
Iroquois—were particularly skilled in creating sophisticated and long-lasting political
alliances in which decisions were made by a central council made up of a specified number
of representatives from each tribe.
Spurred on by the merchant class’s accumulation of capital and the eviction of people
when Henry VIII seized church property, England’s colonizing e∑orts began in earnest with
the settlement on Roanoke Island, promoted by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. The colony
disappeared, but by 1700 England had acquired an overseas empire in North America.
In 1620 separatists (today known as Puritans) who wished to break away from the Church
of England arrived at Cape Cod on a ship named the Mayflower. Before settling in nearby
Plymouth, forty-one adult males signed a written agreement “for our better ordering and

474 U N I T E D S T A T E S
preservation,” called the Mayflower Compact, which dealt with the form of their future
government.
In contrast to the Spanish, whose method of colonization was uniform, the English
settlements and later colonies were diverse in their organizational structures. Virginia held
the first legislative assembly in America in 1619, called by its governor. Massachusetts,
initially administered by a governor under a charter from the king, set up a bicameral legis-
lature in the 1640s along with the position of governor, elected by adult male members of
the church. Similarly, Roger Williams obtained a charter for Rhode Island, but su∑rage was
not limited to church members, and all Christian religions were protected from govern-
ment interference. New Hampshire became a separate colony in 1670, with a governor
appointed by the king.
Maryland, Carolina, and New Jersey, on the other hand, were proprietorships that the king
gave in outright ownership to individuals. Maryland was conveyed to George Calvert, a
Roman Catholic, but its charter provided for a representative assembly. William Penn
acquired Pennsylvania and set up a liberal government, extending the right to vote to all
adult landowners and taxpayers. Besides English colonists, the original thirteen colonies
were settled by Dutch, Scotch-Irish, German, Swiss, French Huguenot, Jewish, Swedish,
and Welsh settlers.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 in England, a new committee to govern the
colonies and protect trade and navigation there was created. Customs o≈ces with the power
to search private premises were established. The 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven
Years’ War, required both France and Spain to cede territory in America to Britain, whose
parliament began levying direct taxes on the colonists and imposing other onerous
measures. With the Stamp Act in 1765, which levied a duty on a range of items from legal
documents to playing cards, the seeds of revolt were sown. The colonial assemblies agreed
on a joint protest, which led to a congress held in New York City and the assertion of
colonists’ rights in a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. The Stamp Act was repealed, but
British soldiers’ massacre of a rioting mob in Boston and the British parliament’s attempt to
allow the East India Company to monopolize the tea trade fanned the flames of revolution.
At the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in 1774, a majority of the
members agreed that the British parliament had no right to pass any laws for the colonies,
and in 1775 war broke out between British troops and colonial minutemen (militia
members). The following year the tone for the conflict and its aftermath was set by the
Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Je∑erson, and a pamphlet entitled
“Common Sense,” by Thomas Paine, a recent British immigrant. Well before the British
surrender in 1781, each of the thirteen colonies had adopted written documents of funda-
mental law. Some were merely amended royal charters, but all except one provided for a
bicameral legislature, and most contained a version of a bill of rights and expanded su∑rage.
The prototypes for these fundamental laws were the constitution and declaration of rights
drafted in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1776, largely the work of George Mason.
The Articles of Confederation, drafted by the Second Continental Congress and ratified in
1781, broke new ground in terms of a formal separation of powers between the national and
state governments but did little to promote economic development or political cohesion. It
provided for a unicameral legislature in which each state had one vote regardless of the size
of its population or its delegation to the congress; important legislation had to be approved
by a two-thirds vote, or nine out of thirteen states; the executive consisted of a committee of
one delegate from each state; and any amendments had to be by unanimous consent.
In 1785 the congress recommended revisions to the articles, and the process began in
earnest in early 1786, when a resolution by the Virginia legislature called for a meeting in
Annapolis, Maryland, of “commissioners” from the states to improve trade and create

U N I T E D S T A T E S 475
 uniform commercial regulations. A second meeting, endorsed by the congress, was held in
Philadelphia to make the constitution of the federal government adequate for the union.
On May 25, 1787, the convention, made up of delegates from all the states except for
Rhode Island, met and elected George Washington its president. The draft constitution
was signed by all but three delegates and transmitted to the congress, which in turn directed
that it be submitted to the state legislatures for approval. Ignoring the unanimity require-
ment of the Articles of Confederation, the new constitution after ratification by nine states
would be valid by its own terms for those states that had ratified it. Ratification occurred in
1788, and on April 30, 1789, Washington was inaugurated as the first president under the new
constitution. In 1790 Rhode Island became the thirteenth state to ratify it.
Most issues at the convention were resolved with little debate. The concept of the separa-
tion of powers, particularly between the legislature and the judiciary, for example, was well
known and already incorporated in a majority of the individual constitutions of the colonies
or states. Even the extensive grant of power to the legislature by the “commerce clause”—
clause 3, section 8, of article 1—caused little concern because it was part of the proposals
submitted by the two major factions at the conventions, the large states and the small states.
The major issue of proportional or equal representation for the states in the national legis-
lature was framed by two proposals—one by the large states, known as the Virginia Plan,
and one by the small states, known as the New Jersey Plan. The small states proposed a
unicameral legislature, with each state having one vote, as under the Articles of Confeder-
ation. The large states’ proposal called for a bicameral legislature with membership in both
houses based on population, the lower house to be elected by the people and the upper
house by the lower house. The entire legislature would elect the judiciary. The Great
Compromise that came about created an upper house (senate) in which each state would
have two members, who were to be elected by their state legislatures. Direct elections for
members of the senate were instituted by the seventeenth amendment in 1913.
The first ten amendments, called the bill of rights, were ratified on December 15, 1791, and
provide guarantees against the national government’s infringement on fundamental rights
and freedoms of the people and the states. In all, there are twenty-seven amendments, the
last becoming e∑ective in 1992—some two centuries after it was proposed along with the bill
of rights. While there have been no recent formal amendments to the document, as in the
past, U.S. Supreme Court decisions continue to define the parameters of the document. For
example, in 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the court struck down a state law that criminalized
private, adult, consensual homosexual behavior as a violation of the implied right of privacy,
and in 2004, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the court rejected the executive branch’s assertion of
virtually unlimited power to detain suspected terrorists.

Influences Contemporaneous writings on the constitution in The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton,

James Madison, and John Jay indicate that, in addition to the early Greek democracies and
the Roman republic, the framers of the constitution were influenced, both positively and
negatively, by the constitutions of many existing and past nations and confederations of
Europe, including, of course, the British constitution. Perhaps the most profound influence,
particularly with respect to the bill of rights, was English common law. The U.S., British, and
French constitutions together have had a profound e∑ect on the modern constitutions of the
world in the last two hundred years.

T H E C O N S T I T U T I O N William Gladstone, who served as the British prime minister four times in the late nine-
teenth century, called the U.S. constitution “the most wonderful work ever struck o∑ at a
given time by the brain and purpose of man” (letter to the committee in charge of the cele-
bration of the centennial of the American constitution, July 20, 1887).

476 U N I T E D S T A T E S
 The constitution of the United States of America, as do other constitutions, contains both
substantive as well as procedural aspects: while the document describes in broad outline and
some specifics how the government should operate, the framers also incorporated under-
lying beliefs and goals. Such substantive concepts as “the consent of the governed” or the
idea “that an individual is an end, not a means” may not be expressly stated, but they inform
the document and provide a touchstone for understanding and interpreting both the consti-
tution and the Declaration of Independence.
The preamble is short (as is the entire document, which, including the twenty-seven
amendments, contains only approximately thirty-five hundred words):
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure the
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of
America.

In addition to the bill of rights, article 1, section 9, of the constitution prohibits, among other Fundamental Rights
things, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, except in time of rebellion or invasion; any
bill of attainder or ex post facto law; direct taxation not based proportionally on the latest
census; and taxation on goods exported from a state.
The first ten amendments that constitute the bill of rights were originally intended to
protect individual rights against actions by the national government, but by the terms of the
fourteenth amendment, ratified after the Civil War, individual rights are now protected
against actions by the states. The rights and freedoms include freedom of religion, speech,
the press, assembly, and petition of the government for a redress of grievances; because of
the necessity for a well-regulated militia, the right to bear arms; protection against unrea-
sonable searches and seizures, double jeopardy, and self-incrimination in criminal cases; the
right to a speedy and public trial, an impartial jury, and legal counsel; and guarantees
against excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.
Article 9 states that the enumeration of rights does not preclude other rights retained by
the people, and article 10 provides that powers not granted to the national government nor
prohibited to the states are reserved to the states and the people, respectively. Other rights
such as protection against involuntary servitude and discrimination in voting on the basis
of race or sex have been added by amendment. A right of privacy, although not expressly
stated in the constitution, has also been identified by the courts in certain cases.

The United States is a federal state, with a national government and governments in each of Division of Powers
the fifty constituent states. According to the fourteenth amendment, persons born in the
country or naturalized are citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside. The
national government handles defense and foreign policy exclusively, while the states have
individual militia and police power. At the national level power is divided among three
coequal branches: the executive branch headed by a president, who is head of state and
government; the bicameral legislative branch with houses of basically coequal power; and the
independent judiciary, which exercises judicial review.

President. One of the more original aspects of the U.S. constitution is the nature of the pres- The Executive
idency. While the actual power of the president swells and ebbs with the incumbent’s
personality and the times, the president’s role as both head of state and government, the
almost exclusive authority over the armed forces and foreign a∑airs, his or her position as
head of one of the two major political parties, and security in o≈ce for at least four years
make the position potentially powerful.

U N I T E D S T A T E S 477
 The president is elected indirectly by the people through electors (the electoral college)
from the states equal to the number of members of the national legislature to which they are
entitled, and, by amendment in 1961, electors from the federal capital district, limited,
however, to no more than the number from the least populous state. A close presidential
election in 2000, which was settled by the Supreme Court, has raised questions about elec-
tion procedures and the electoral college itself.
Only natural-born citizens who are at least thirty-five years old and have been a resident
for fourteen years are eligible to be president or vice president. By amendment in 1804, the
electors vote for the vice president on a separate ballot, although the president and vice pres-
ident run for o≈ce together on a party ticket. Until the mid-twentieth century it was tradi-
tional for a president to serve only two terms; after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for a
fourth term, an amendment in 1951 provided that no person may be elected to the o≈ce of
the president more than twice.
According to article 2, section 2, the president is commander in chief of the armed forces
and the militia of the states when called to national service; has oversight of the executive
departments; grants reprieves and pardons, except in cases of impeachment; makes treaties
with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the upper house of the legislature; and, subject
to the confirmation, that is, “with the advice and consent,” of the upper house, appoints
ambassadors, public ministers, federal judges, and other high o≈cials of the national govern-
ment, including cabinet secretaries, who are heads of departments, and many subcabinet-
level o≈cials. The authority to change policy-making o≈cials on the inauguration of a new
president, especially one from a di∑erent party, is called patronage, or the spoils system.
The president also is required to advise the legislature from time to time, generally once
a year, on the state of the nation; may convene and adjourn the legislature on extraordinary
occasions; receives ambassadors; commissions all the o≈cers of the United States; and
“shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. . . .”
The president, vice president (whose only o≈cial duty is to serve as the president of the
upper house and cast tie-breaking votes), and all civil o≈cers of the United States may be
removed from o≈ce by impeachment on being convicted of “treason, bribery, or other high
crimes and misdemeanors.” There have been three attempts to impeach a president: Andrew
Johnson escaped conviction in 1868 when the upper house fell one vote shy of the two-thirds
vote necessary to convict him. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 after the judiciary committee of
the lower house recommended impeachment, which would have had to be approved by the
lower house and then tried in the upper house with the chief justice of the supreme court
presiding. And William Je∑erson Clinton’s impeachment by the lower house in 1999 was not
confirmed by the upper house.

Cabinet. Clause 1 of section 2, article 2, refers to the principal o≈cer in each executive
department, and clause 2 charges the president with the power to appoint all other o≈cers
of the United States not otherwise provided for in the constitution, with the advice and
consent of the upper house of the legislature. The heads of executive departments such as
state, justice, defense, the treasury, and others are called secretaries; collectively, with certain
other o≈cials accorded cabinet rank, they make up the cabinet.
Members of the U.S. cabinet, in contrast to the traditional parliamentary system of
government, have no role in the legislature nor generally any individual constituency,
although in most cases they are members of the incumbent president’s party. They are
responsible to the president, who may reassign or dismiss them. Also in contrast to the
parliamentary system, cabinet secretaries are the sole administrative heads of their depart-
ments, and a number of their top-level subordinates are also political appointees rather than
career civil servants.

478 U N I T E D S T A T E S
Congress. Article 1, section 1, provides that “all legislative powers shall be vested in a congress The Legislature
of the United States, which shall consist of a senate and a house of representatives.”

Upper House. The members of the senate, two from each state, are elected directly and at large
from their states, one-third every two years for six-year terms. Senators must be thirty years
old and a citizen for nine years in addition to being inhabitants of the state from which they
are elected. The vice president of the United States is the o≈cial presiding o≈cer of the senate.

Lower House. The house of representatives consists of 435 members elected every two years
on the basis of population and by districts in the states. To be eligible for the house, a
person must have been a citizen for at least seven years and be at least twenty-five years old
and an inhabitant of the state from which he or she is elected.

After every general election the majority and minority parties in both houses organize and
elect party leaders, and the majority party elects the chair of committees and selects the
majority of the members on each committee. The house elects a speaker from the majority
party along with other o≈cers.
Among the powers given to the congress are regulating commerce, levying taxes, declaring
war, establishing inferior courts, regulating the currency, and establishing the post o≈ce.
Bills for raising revenue must originate in the house of representatives, where by tradition
appropriations bills also originate. Exclusive powers of the senate include confirming major
appointments by the president and ratifying major treaties.
Bills may be introduced only by members of congress. A majority of the members in each
house constitutes a quorum. Bills passed by a majority in both houses must be approved by
the president, who may veto a bill, but that veto may be overridden by a two-thirds vote in
both houses. Some matters, such as proposing constitutional amendments, ratifying treaties,
and convicting on impeachment (in the senate) require a two-thirds vote for passage.
Unlike the British parliament, the U.S. congress is not “supreme” but is expressly subject
to the checks and balances of the executive and judicial branches. It also does not have the
parliamentary right of controlling the executive branch through interpellation, or ques-
tioning the heads of executive departments with a view to withdrawing its vote of confidence
in the government; the congress does have investigative authority, however. The president,
unlike the British prime minister, is elected independently of the congress every four years
and, therefore, as is often the case, may not be a member of the majority party in either or
both houses of congress.
Three major factors not dealt with in the constitution have significantly a∑ected the way
the U.S. congress works today: the rise of the two-party system, the development of a large
lobbying industry on behalf of special-interest groups, and the power of the congressional
committees, particularly the chairs and their sta∑s.

Article 3, section 1, establishes the judicial branch: The Judiciary

The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and such inferior courts as the
congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall
hold their o≈ces during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation,
which shall not be diminished during their continuance in o≈ce.

The power of the federal judiciary extends to all cases arising under the constitution, the
national laws, and treaties; cases a∑ecting foreign representatives; cases of admiralty and
maritime jurisdiction; cases in which the United States is a party; cases between states; cases
between a state and a citizen of another state; cases between citizens of di∑erent states; and

U N I T E D S T A T E S 479
 cases between a state or its citizens and foreign countries, citizens, and subjects. The federal
court system in the United States is three-tiered, with district courts throughout the nation,
circuit courts of appeal in many regional centers, and the supreme court in the nation’s
capital. There is a separate state court system in each of the fifty states.

Supreme Court. The court currently has nine justices, including a chief justice, who are
appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the upper house of the legislature.
The supreme court has original jurisdiction in cases involving foreign representatives and
cases in which a state is a party. In all other cases its jurisdiction is on appeal.
While it is not expressly stated in the constitution, the framers were aware of the concept
of judicial review, in which independent courts determine whether legislation or govern-
ment action is unconstitutional and therefore void. In 1776 Thomas Paine declared that in
America the law, rather than a monarch, should be king. The foundation for judicial review
was laid even earlier by the English jurist Edward Coke when he described Magna Carta as
“being the fountain of all the fundamental laws of the realm [emphasis added]” (Edward
Coke, Institutes, 1628, 1:81). But it was not until the case of Marbury v. Madison, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, that the U.S. supreme court declared invalid an act of
the congress extending to the court authority that had not been granted by the constitution.
Speaking for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled: “Thus the particular
phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle,
supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that law repugnant to the constitution
is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”

Amending the Constitution The U.S. constitution became e∑ective extraconstitutionally, because under the Articles of
Confederation amendments required the unanimous consent of the thirteen states. But by
its own terms the constitution was to become e∑ective for those states that ratified it once
only nine states had ratified it—thus confirming that the people always retain a funda-
mental right to change their form of government even under an existing constitution.
The U.S. constitution, according to article 5, may be amended when two-thirds of both
houses of the congress propose amendments or when the congress is requested by two-
thirds of the state legislatures to call a constitutional convention. All amendments must
then be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or conventions, based on the
mode of ratification proposed by the congress. No amendment, however, may deprive any
state of equal su∑rage in the senate without its consent. To date no constitutional conven-
tion to propose amendments has been called.

480 U N I T E D S T A T E S