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Constitution

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

Signing of the United States Constitution(Original Caption) The signing of the United States Constitution in 1787. Undated painting by Stearns.

The Constitution of the United States established America’s national government and fundamental laws, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens.

It was signed on September 17, 1787, by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Under America’s first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, the national government was weak and states operated like independent countries. At the 1787 convention, delegates devised a plan for a stronger federal government with three branches—executive, legislative and judicial—along with a system of checks and balances to ensure no single branch would have too much power.

The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution

The Preamble outlines the Constitution's purpose and guiding principles. It reads:

The Bill of Rights were 10 amendments guaranteeing basic individual protections, such as freedom of speech and religion, that became part of the Constitution in 1791. To date, there are 27 constitutional amendments.

Articles of Confederation

America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation , was ratified in 1781, a time when the nation was a loose confederation of states, each operating like independent countries. The national government was comprised of a single legislature, the Congress of the Confederation; there was no president or judicial branch.

The Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war and regulate currency; however, in reality these powers were sharply limited because Congress had no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops.

Did you know? George Washington was initially reluctant to attend the Constitutional Convention. Although he saw the need for a stronger national government, he was busy managing his estate at Mount Vernon, suffering from rheumatism and worried that the convention wouldn't be successful in achieving its goals.

Soon after America won its independence from Great Britain with its 1783 victory in the American Revolution , it became increasingly evident that the young republic needed a stronger central government in order to remain stable.

In 1786, Alexander Hamilton , a lawyer and politician from New York , called for a constitutional convention to discuss the matter. The Confederation Congress, which in February 1787 endorsed the idea, invited all 13 states to send delegates to a meeting in Philadelphia.

Forming a More Perfect Union

On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence had been adopted 11 years earlier. There were 55 delegates in attendance, representing all 13 states except Rhode Island , which refused to send representatives because it did not want a powerful central government interfering in its economic business. George Washington , who’d become a national hero after leading the Continental Army to victory during the American Revolution, was selected as president of the convention by unanimous vote.

The delegates (who also became known as the “framers” of the Constitution) were a well-educated group that included merchants, farmers, bankers and lawyers. Many had served in the Continental Army, colonial legislatures or the Continental Congress (known as the Congress of the Confederation as of 1781). In terms of religious affiliation, most were Protestants. Eight delegates were signers of the Declaration of Independence, while six had signed the Articles of Confederation.

At age 81, Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was the oldest delegate, while the majority of the delegates were in their 30s and 40s. Political leaders not in attendance at the convention included Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and John Adams (1735-1826), who were serving as U.S. ambassadors in Europe. John Jay (1745-1829), Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and John Hancock (1737-93) were also absent from the convention. Virginia’s Patrick Henry (1736-99) was chosen to be a delegate but refused to attend the convention because he didn’t want to give the central government more power, fearing it would endanger the rights of states and individuals.

Reporters and other visitors were barred from the convention sessions, which were held in secret to avoid outside pressures. However, Virginia’s James Madison (1751-1836) kept a detailed account of what transpired behind closed doors. (In 1837, Madison’s widow Dolley sold some of his papers, including his notes from the convention debates, to the federal government for $30,000.)

Debating the Constitution

The delegates had been tasked by Congress with amending the Articles of Confederation; however, they soon began deliberating proposals for an entirely new form of government. After intensive debate, which continued throughout the summer of 1787 and at times threatened to derail the proceedings, they developed a plan that established three branches of national government–executive, legislative and judicial. A system of checks and balances was put into place so that no single branch would have too much authority. The specific powers and responsibilities of each branch were also laid out.

Among the more contentious issues was the question of state representation in the national legislature. Delegates from larger states wanted population to determine how many representatives a state could send to Congress, while small states called for equal representation. The issue was resolved by the Connecticut Compromise, which proposed a bicameral legislature with proportional representation of the states in the lower house ( House of Representatives ) and equal representation in the upper house (Senate).

Another controversial topic was slavery. Although some northern states had already started to outlaw the practice, they went along with the southern states’ insistence that slavery was an issue for individual states to decide and should be kept out of the Constitution. Many northern delegates believed that without agreeing to this, the South wouldn’t join the Union. For the purposes of taxation and determining how many representatives a state could send to Congress, it was decided that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person. Additionally, it was agreed that Congress wouldn’t be allowed to prohibit the slave trade before 1808, and states were required to return fugitive enslaved people to their owners.

Ratifying the Constitution

By September 1787, the convention’s five-member Committee of Style (Hamilton, Madison, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, Gouverneur Morris of New York, Rufus King of Massachusetts ) had drafted the final text of the Constitution, which consisted of some 4,200 words. On September 17, George Washington was the first to sign the document. Of the 55 delegates, a total of 39 signed; some had already left Philadelphia, and three–George Mason (1725-92) and Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) of Virginia , and Elbridge Gerry (1744-1813) of Massachusetts–refused to approve the document. In order for the Constitution to become law, it then had to be ratified by nine of the 13 states.

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, with assistance from John Jay, wrote a series of essays to persuade people to ratify the Constitution. The 85 essays, known collectively as “The Federalist” (or “The Federalist Papers”), detailed how the new government would work, and were published under the pseudonym Publius (Latin for “public”) in newspapers across the states starting in the fall of 1787. (People who supported the Constitution became known as Federalists, while those opposed it because they thought it gave too much power to the national government were called Anti-Federalists.)

Beginning on December 7, 1787, five states– Delaware , Pennsylvania, New Jersey , Georgia and Connecticut–ratified the Constitution in quick succession. However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document, as it failed to reserve un-delegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion and the press.

In February 1788, a compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states would agree to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would be immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina . On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, and it was subsequently agreed that government under the U.S. Constitution would begin on March 4, 1789. George Washington was inaugurated as America’s first president on April 30, 1789. In June of that same year, Virginia ratified the Constitution, and New York followed in July. On February 2, 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court held its first session, marking the date when the government was fully operative.

Rhode Island, the last holdout of the original 13 states, finally ratified the Constitution on May 29, 1790.

The Bill of Rights

In 1789, Madison, then a member of the newly established U.S. House of Representatives , introduced 19 amendments to the Constitution. On September 25, 1789, Congress adopted 12 of the amendments and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of these amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights , were ratified and became part of the Constitution on December 10, 1791. The Bill of Rights guarantees individuals certain basic protections as citizens, including freedom of speech, religion and the press; the right to bear and keep arms; the right to peaceably assemble; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; and the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. For his contributions to the drafting of the Constitution, as well as its ratification, Madison became known as “Father of the Constitution.”

To date, there have been thousands of proposed amendments to the Constitution. However, only 17 amendments have been ratified in addition to the Bill of Rights because the process isn’t easy–after a proposed amendment makes it through Congress, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. The most recent amendment to the Constitution, Article XXVII, which deals with congressional pay raises, was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992.

The Constitution Today

In the more than 200 years since the Constitution was created, America has stretched across an entire continent and its population and economy have expanded more than the document’s framers likely ever could have envisioned. Through all the changes, the Constitution has endured and adapted.

The framers knew it wasn’t a perfect document. However, as Benjamin Franklin said on the closing day of the convention in 1787: “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a central government is necessary for us… I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.” Today, the original Constitution is on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Constitution Day is observed on September 17, to commemorate the date the document was signed.

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Text of the Constitution of the United States

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Table Of Contents

On September 17, 1787, the United States Constitution —the oldest written constitution still in effect today—was approved and signed in Philadelphia by thirty-nine delegates to the federal convention. The document has been hailed as the most successful work of its kind in modern history. The delegates to the convention had widely differing views about the form that a central government should take. Perhaps the convention’s genius was its ability to frame a single document that people of different political principles could agree to accept. The language of the Constitution, as historian Clinton Rossiter says, is both “precise” and “vague.” These two qualities may be the secret of the document’s long life. The founders were well aware that they were acting for future generations and that certain phrases in the Constitution would have to be left open for future interpretation. The recognition of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land historicallyhas not been lacking even from those who, in times of crisis, have had diametrically opposed views of its meaning and intent.

This text of the Constitution follows the copy signed by Gen. George Washington and the deputies from 12 states.

We the People of the United States , in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

[Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.] ( The preceding text in brackets was changed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. ) The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, [chosen by the Legislature thereof,] ( The preceding text in brackets was changed by Section 1 of the Seventeenth Amendment. ) for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; [and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies]. ( The preceding text in brackets was changed by clause 2 of the Seventeenth amendment. )

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall [be on the first Monday in December,] ( The preceding text in brackets was changed by Section 2 of the Twentieth Amendment. ) unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and 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.

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.

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They 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; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. ( See also the Sixteenth amendment. )

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

[The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.] ( This paragraph has been superseded by the Twelfth Amendment. )

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office ( This provision has been affected by the Twenty-fifth Amendment. ), the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he 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; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

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The Constitution

Why a constitution.

The need for the Constitution grew out of problems with the Articles of Confederation, which established a “firm league of friendship” between the States, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. This power was, however, extremely limited—the central government conducted diplomacy and made war, set weights and measures, and was the final arbiter of disputes between the States. Crucially, it could not raise any funds itself, and was entirely dependent on the States themselves for the money necessary to operate. Each State sent a delegation of between two and seven members to the Congress, and they voted as a bloc with each State getting one vote. But any decision of consequence required a unanimous vote, which led to a government that was paralyzed and ineffectual.

A movement to reform the Articles began, and invitations to attend a convention in Philadelphia to discuss changes to the Articles were sent to the State legislatures in 1787. In May of that year, delegates from 12 of the 13 States (Rhode Island sent no representatives) convened in Philadelphia to begin the work of redesigning government. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention quickly began work on drafting a new Constitution for the United States.

The Constitutional Convention

A chief aim of the Constitution as drafted by the Convention was to create a government with enough power to act on a national level, but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk. One way that this was accomplished was to separate the power of government into three branches, and then to include checks and balances on those powers to assure that no one branch of government gained supremacy. This concern arose largely out of the experience that the delegates had with the King of England and his powerful Parliament. The powers of each branch are enumerated in the Constitution, with powers not assigned to them reserved to the States.

Much of the debate, which was conducted in secret to ensure that delegates spoke their minds, focused on the form that the new legislature would take. Two plans competed to become the new government: the Virginia Plan, which apportioned representation based on the population of each State, and the New Jersey plan, which gave each State an equal vote in Congress. The Virginia Plan was supported by the larger States, and the New Jersey plan preferred by the smaller. In the end, they settled on the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Connecticut Compromise), in which the House of Representatives would represent the people as apportioned by population; the Senate would represent the States apportioned equally; and the President would be elected by the Electoral College. The plan also called for an independent judiciary.

The founders also took pains to establish the relationship between the States. States are required to give “full faith and credit” to the laws, records, contracts, and judicial proceedings of the other States, although Congress may regulate the manner in which the States share records, and define the scope of this clause. States are barred from discriminating against citizens of other States in any way, and cannot enact tariffs against one another. States must also extradite those accused of crimes to other States for trial.

The founders also specified a process by which the Constitution may be amended, and since its ratification, the Constitution has been amended 27 times. In order to prevent arbitrary changes, the process for making amendments is quite onerous. An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification. In modern times, amendments have traditionally specified a time frame in which this must be accomplished, usually a period of several years. Additionally, the Constitution specifies that no amendment can deny a State equal representation in the Senate without that State’s consent.

With the details and language of the Constitution decided, the Convention got down to the work of actually setting the Constitution to paper. It is written in the hand of a delegate from Pennsylvania, Gouverneur Morris, whose job allowed him some reign over the actual punctuation of a few clauses in the Constitution. He is also credited with the famous preamble, quoted at the top of this page. On September 17, 1787, 39 of the 55 delegates signed the new document, with many of those who refused to sign objecting to the lack of a bill of rights. At least one delegate refused to sign because the Constitution codified and protected slavery and the slave trade.

Ratification

The process set out in the Constitution for its ratification provided for much popular debate in the States. The Constitution would take effect once it had been ratified by nine of the thirteen State legislatures; unanimity was not required. During the debate over the Constitution, two factions emerged: the Federalists, who supported adoption, and the Anti-Federalists, who opposed it.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay set out an eloquent defense of the new Constitution in what came to be called the Federalist Papers. Published anonymously in the newspapers The Independent Journal and The New York Packet under the name Publius between October 1787 and August 1788, the 85 articles that comprise the Federalist Papers remain to this day an invaluable resource for understanding some of the framers’ intentions for the Constitution. The most famous of the articles are No. 10, which warns of the dangers of factions and advocates a large republic, and No. 51, which explains the structure of the Constitution, its checks and balances, and how it protects the rights of the people.

The States proceeded to begin ratification, with some debating more intensely than others. Delaware was the first State to ratify, on December 7, 1787. After New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify, on June 22, 1788, the Confederation Congress established March 9, 1789 as the date to begin operating under the Constitution. By this time, all the States except North Carolina and Rhode Island had ratified—the Ocean State was the last to ratify on May 29, 1790.

The Bill of Rights

One of the principal points of contention between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was the lack of an enumeration of basic civil rights in the Constitution. Many Federalists argued, as in Federalist No. 84, that the people surrendered no rights in adopting the Constitution. In several States, however, the ratification debate in some States hinged on the adoption of a bill of rights. The solution was known as the Massachusetts Compromise, in which four States ratified the Constitution but at the same time sent recommendations for amendments to the Congress.

James Madison introduced 12 amendments to the First Congress in 1789. Ten of these would go on to become what we now consider to be the Bill of Rights. One was never passed, while another dealing with Congressional salaries was not ratified until 1992, when it became the 27th Amendment. Based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the English Bill of Rights, the writings of the Enlightenment, and the rights defined in the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights contains rights that many today consider to be fundamental to America.

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

The Third Amendment prohibits the government from quartering troops in private homes, a major grievance during the American Revolution.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. The government may not conduct any searches without a warrant, and such warrants must be issued by a judge and based on probable cause.

The Fifth Amendment provides that citizens not be subject to criminal prosecution and punishment without due process. Citizens may not be tried on the same set of facts twice and are protected from self-incrimination (the right to remain silent). The amendment also establishes the power of eminent domain, ensuring that private property is not seized for public use without just compensation.

The Sixth Amendment assures the right to a speedy trial by a jury of one’s peers, to be informed of the crimes with which one is charged, and to confront the witnesses brought forward by the government. The amendment also provides the accused the right to compel testimony from witnesses, as well as the right to legal representation.

The Seventh Amendment provides that civil cases preserve the right to trial by jury.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment states that the list of rights enumerated in the Constitution is not exhaustive, and that the people retain all rights not enumerated.

The Tenth Amendment assigns all powers not delegated to the United States, or prohibited to the States, to either the States or to the people.

Learn more about the Constitution

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Georgetown Center for the Constitution

The united states constitution.

Welcome to the Originalist’s Constitution! Compiled and maintained by the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, this interactive database categorizes and summarizes more than 1500 law review articles, essays, and other scholarship related to the original meaning of each constitutional provision, aiding scholars, students, law clerks, practitioners, and judges in their search for the original public meaning of our Constitution. This database is made possible through the generosity of our donors.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States...

...the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers....

The House of Representatives...shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Each House may . . . punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

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.

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.

The 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 . . .

[F]or any Speech or Debate in either House, [Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other Place.

[N]o Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.

If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States....

[A]ll Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . borrow Money on the credit of the United States . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . regulate Commerce with foreign Nations . . . .

The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce . . . among the several States . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . regulate Commerce . . . with the Indian Tribes . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . establish . . . uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . fix the Standard of Weights and Measures . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . establish Post Offices and post Roads . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court . . . .

The Congress shall have Power . . . To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the High Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . declare War . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To ...make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water....

The Congress shall have Power To . . . raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide and maintain a Navy . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings . . . .

The Congress shall have Power To . . . make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder . . . shall be passed.

No . . . ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal . . . .

No State shall . . . coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts . . . .

No State shall . . . pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law . . . .

No State shall . . . pass any . . . Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts . . . .

No State shall . . . grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

[The President] shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years . . . .

[T]ogether with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term . . .

[The President] shall . . . together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: — "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States . . . .

The President shall be Commander in Chief . . . of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States . . . .

The President . . . may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices . . . .

The President . . . shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

The President . . . shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur . . . .

The President . . . shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law . . . .

"[T]he Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

"The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session."

"[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union . . . ."

"[The President] shall from time to time . . . recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient . . . ."

"[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 . . . ."

"[The President] shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers . . . ."

"[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . . ."

[The President] shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article III

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court....

...and in 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 Offices during good Behavior.

The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts...shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States....

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority....

The judicial Power shall extend to ...all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls....

The judicial Power shall extend to ...all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction....

The judicial Power shall extend to ...Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party....

The judicial Power shall extend to ...Controversies between two or more States....

The judicial Power shall extend to ...Controversies...between Citizens of different States....

The judicial Power shall extend to ...Controversies...between a State and Citizens of another State ...and between a State...and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

The judicial Power shall extend to ...Controversies...between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States....

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.

In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. 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.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

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

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States....

...nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory...belonging to the United States....

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

...no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article....

...no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

The Congress,...on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments,...

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Article VII

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names....

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion....

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....

Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press....

Congress shall make no law... abridging...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated....

[N]o 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.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury....

...except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger....

...nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb....

No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself....

No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy . . . trial . . . .

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a . . . public trial . . . .

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a . . . trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law . . . .

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to ...be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation....

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to . . . be confronted with the witnesses against him . . . .

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to . . . have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor . . . .

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved....

In Suits at common law . . . no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required . . . .

[N]or excessive fines imposed . . . .

[N]or cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

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

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Amendment XI

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Amendment XII

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; — the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; — The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. — The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Amendment XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XIV

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . .

No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .

No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XVI

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Amendment XVII

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct. This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Amendment XVIII

Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XIX

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XX

Section 1. The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

Amendment XXI

Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XXII

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XXIII

Section 1. The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XXIV

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XXV

Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Amendment XXVI

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XXVII

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

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Constitution Annotated: A Research Guide

Guide to constitution annotated essays.

Introduction
How to Use the Constitution Annotated Website
Resources for Constitution Annotated Research
Primary and Secondary Sources
Related Research Guides

As a starting point to your constitutional research, you can begin to explore the Constitution Annotated by subject matter using the menu below or by inputting keywords in the search bar .

The links in the section below take you to the browse section for each constitutional provision's annotated essays. Individual essays can be accessed by clicking the serial numbers left of each essay title.

<em>Constitution Annotated</em> volumes, from 1938 to 2012. Earlier iterations date back to the 19th century.

Introductory Essays

U.S. Constitution (Articles 1-7)
Bill of Rights (1-10)
Early Amendments (11-12)
Reconstruction Amendments (13-15)
Early 20th Century Amendments (16-22)
Post-War Amendments (23-27)

Unratified Amendments

These essays introduce the reader to various components underpinning the Constitution Annotated and how the Constitution is interpreted today.

Constitution Annotated Methodology This section of essays explains the methodology for the current edition of the Constitution Annotated—that is, the rules and principles that dictate the organization and construction of the document.
Organization of the Constitution Annotated The section of essays covers how the Constitution Annotated is organized.
Historical Background of the Constitution This section of essays covers the historical background of the creation of the Constitution in 1787, looking at the Articles of Confederation and the Constitutional Convention.
Basic Principles Underlying the Constitution This section of essays explores the basic principles underlying and permeating the Constitution, such as federalism, separation of powers, and rights.
Ways to Interpret the Constitution This section of essays explores the various current frameworks by which the Constitution is interpreted by the Supreme Court, such as textualism, pragmatism, and moral reasoning.

The U.S. Constitution

The foundational legal document of the United States of America.

Legislative Power (Article I)

This section encompasses essays on Article I of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Legislative branch, its powers, and functions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Historical Origin Limits on Federal Power .

Executive Power (Article II)

This section encompasses essays on Article II of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Executive branch, the Presidency, its powers, and functions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Overview of Article II, Executive Branch .

Judicial Power (Article III)

This section encompasses essays on Article III of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Judicial branch, its powers, and functions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review .

Interstate Relations (Article IV)

This section encompasses essays on Article IV of the Constitution dealing specifically with the relationships between states. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Purpose of Privileges and Immunities Clause.

Amending the Constitution (Article V)

This section encompasses essays on Article V of the Constitution dealing specifically with the creation of constitutional amendments. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Congressional Proposals of Amendments .

Supreme Law (Article VI)

This section encompasses essays on Article VI of the Constitution dealing specifically with the establishment of the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Overview of the Supremacy Clause.

Ratification (Article VII)

This section encompasses essays on Article VII of the Constitution dealing specifically with the ratification of the Constitution.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution.

First Amendment: Fundamental Freedoms

This section encompasses essays on the First Amendment dealing specifically with fundamental freedoms. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on State Action Doctrine and Free Speech .

Second Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Second Amendment dealing specifically with the right to bear arms. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Early Second Amendment Jurisprudence.

Third Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Third Amendment dealing specifically with the quartering of soldiers. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Government Intrusion .

Fourth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Fourth Amendment dealing specifically with searches and seizures. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Amendment’s Historical Background .

Fifth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Fifth Amendment dealing specifically with the rights of persons. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing Due Process .

Sixth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Sixth Amendment dealing specifically with rights in criminal prosecutions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Prejudice and the Right to a Speedy Trial.

Seventh Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Seventh Amendment dealing specifically with civil trial rights. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing the Seventh Amendment.

Eighth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Eighth Amendment dealing specifically with cruel and unusual punishment. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the standard of cruel and unusual punishment.

Ninth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Ninth Amendment dealing specifically with unenumerated rights. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Amendment’s modern doctrine.

Tenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Tenth Amendment dealing specifically with rights reserved to states and the people. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on State Sovereignty .

Early Amendments

The two earliest amendments ratified after the Bill of Rights.

Eleventh Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Eleventh Amendment dealing specifically with suits against states. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Amendment’s historical background.

Twelfth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twelfth Amendment dealing specifically with the election of the President.

Reconstruction Amendments

Also referred to as the Civil War Amendments, the 13th-15th Amendments were passed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War to enshrine constitutional protections for newly-freed Black Americans.

Thirteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Thirteenth Amendment dealing specifically with the abolition of slavery. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Defining Badges and Incidents of Slavery

Fourteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Fourteenth Amendment dealing specifically with equal protection and other rights. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing Substantive Due Process .

Fifteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Fifteenth Amendment dealing specifically with the right to vote. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the right to vote generally .

Early Twentieth Century Amendments

The constitutional amendments ratified in the early twentieth century prior to the Second World War.

Sixteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Sixteenth Amendment dealing specifically with income tax. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the historical background of the Amendment.

Seventeenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Seventeenth Amendment dealing specifically with the popular election of senators. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the historical background of the Amendment.

Eighteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Eighteenth Amendment dealing specifically with the prohibition of alcohol.

Nineteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Nineteenth Amendment dealing specifically with women’s suffrage. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing the amendment .

Twentieth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twentieth Amendment dealing specifically with the presidential terms and succession.

Twenty-First Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-First Amendment dealing specifically with the repeal of prohibition. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on interstate commerce .

Twenty-Second Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Second Amendment dealing specifically with Presidential term limits.

Post-War Amendments

Constitutional amendments passed in the twentieth century after the conclusion of the Second World War.

Twenty-Third Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Third Amendment dealing specifically with District of Columbia electors.

Twenty-Fourth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Fourth Amendment dealing specifically with the abolition of poll tax.

Twenty-Fifth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment dealing specifically with Presidential vacancy.

Twenty-Sixth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment dealing specifically with the reduction of voting age.

Twenty-Seventh Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment dealing specifically with the congressional compensation. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing the amendment .

Six amendments have been proposed by Congress, but have not been ratified by the States.

Proposed Amendments Not Ratified by the States This essay covers amendments proposed by Congress, but as of yet unratified by the States.
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America's Founding Documents

The Constitution: How Did it Happen?

Concern about the articles of confederation.

Just a few years after the Revolutionary War, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington feared their young country was on the brink of collapse. America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, gave the Confederation Congress the power to make rules and request funds from the states, but it had no enforcement powers, couldn’t regulate commerce, or print money. The states’ disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the young country apart. Alexander Hamilton helped convince Congress to organize a Grand Convention of state delegates to work on revising the Articles of Confederation.

Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention, 1856

Oil on canvas by Junius Brutus Steams. Courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Constitutional Convention

The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in May of 1787. The delegates shuttered the windows of the State House and swore secrecy so they could speak freely. Although they had gathered to revise the Articles of Confederation, by mid-June they had decided to completely redesign the government. There was little agreement about what form it would take.

One of the fiercest arguments was over congressional representation—should it be based on population or divided equally among the states? The framers compromised by giving each state one representative for every 30,000 people in the House of Representatives and two representatives in the Senate. They agreed to count enslaved Africans as three-fifths of a person. Slavery itself was a thorny question that threatened to derail the Union. It was temporarily resolved when the delegates agreed that the slave trade could continue until 1808.

Writing the Constitution

After three hot summer months of equally heated debate, the delegates appointed a Committee of Detail to put its decisions in writing. Near the end of the convention, a Committee of Style and Arrangement kneaded it into its final form, condensing 23 articles into seven in less than four days.

On September 17, 1787, 38 delegates signed the Constitution. George Reed signed for John Dickinson of Delaware, who was absent, bringing the total number of signatures to 39. It was an extraordinary achievement. Tasked with revising the existing government, the delegates came up with a completely new one. Wary about centralized power and loyal to their states, they created a powerful central government. Representing wildly different interests and views, they crafted compromises. It stands today as one of the longest-lived and most emulated constitutions in the world.

Ratification

The founders set the terms for ratifying the Constitution. They bypassed the state legislatures, reasoning that their members would be reluctant to give up power to a national government. Instead, they called for special ratifying conventions in each state. Ratification by 9 of the 13 states enacted the new government. But at the time, only 6 of 13 states reported a pro-Constitution majority.

The Federalists, who believed that a strong central government was necessary to face the nation’s challenges, needed to convert at least three states. The Anti-Federalists fought hard against the Constitution because it created a powerful central government that reminded them of the one they had just overthrown, and it lacked a bill of rights.

The ratification campaign was a nail-biter. The tide turned in Massachusetts, where the “vote now, amend later” compromise helped secure victory in that state and eventually in the final holdouts.

What Does it Say? How Was it Made?

The Constitution

When the American Founders declared independence from Britain, they explained that they were doing so because its government was violating their inalienable rights, which include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As they organized to fight the British and write the Declaration of Independence, the American colonists formed a confederation of states with some basic agreements called “The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” The Articles of Confederation enabled them to cooperate in waging the Revolutionary War and to speak with a single voice when negotiating for weapons and trade with countries like France.

Soon after the war ended, however, many Founders began to argue that the Articles of Confederation were not adequate to secure the rights they had fought to defend. Any law or treaty established under the Articles could be ignored by a state government. Citizens of one state could be treated with unfairly negative bias by courts in another state. States were beginning to tax one another’s products, threatening to undermine American prosperity by hampering free trade.

405px alexander hamilton portrait by john trumbull 1806

“The peace of the whole,” argued Alexander Hamilton, “ought not to be left at the disposal of a part” (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 80, 1788).

Americans had battled one of the most powerful nations on earth because its king trampled their rights. Now many believed they faced the opposite problem: a government without enough authority to pay its debts, guarantee equal treatment before the law, or fund a small defensive army.

As states sent delegates to a convention organized to revise the Articles of Confederation, many ideas emerged about how a national government should work. Despite their differences, most delegates agreed that government should be constrained from abusing citizens’ rights while also possessing sufficient power to protect those rights. They also understood that whatever they proposed needed approval from legislatures in most of the states, which meant that they also had to take into account local interests and concerns.

Their goal—as they eventually explained in the opening sentences (the Preamble) of the Constitution—was “to form a more perfect union.” Many who think the word “perfect” can only mean “flawless” miss what the Constitution’s framers intended. They weren’t claiming that the Constitution would make for a flawless national government. They were using the definition of “perfect” that meant—especially in their day—“complete” or “lacking in no essential detail.” In other words, they desired a true union of states, with enough authority to bind them and their citizens, yet with a universal set of rights and freedom for people to make most governmental decisions in their states and communities.

The Constitution’s preamble also reveals that its framers believed the system they devised—by dividing government into branches that would check one another’s exercise of power, and listing specific government powers in order to ensure rulers wouldn’t imagine they had more authority than intended—would “establish justice” for its citizens.

Justice meant that citizens would be treated equally and fairly by their government and also have their persons and property protected.

This more perfect union, rooted in ideas of freedom, individual responsibility, and justice, would help to “insure domestic tranquility” between states and their citizens and also provide “for the common defense.” Our national government would have courts to handle disputes between states or between citizens of different states, as well as the power to raise an army if foreign enemies threatened our lands or people.

“Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States,” painting by Howard Chandler Christy

Instead of a mere collection of states as a “firm league of friendship,” the ratification of the Constitution by state conventions would recast the nation as a sovereign entity authorized by “We, the people of the United States.” It would have a government with specific and limited authority. Its leaders would be expected to “promote the general welfare,” meaning they would only pass laws that benefited the nation as a whole and not merely narrow or local interests.

This new, federal government would not make most decisions or take responsibility for making people’s lives better. That would remain the responsibility of individuals and families acting independently or joined together in their communities. That is why the Founders placed such a strong emphasis on virtue. They knew that no government could ever establish peace and prosperity without citizens who were willing to work hard, take care of their families, and stand up for freedom and justice. The job of the federal government would be to protect the freedoms people needed to govern themselves, pursue religion as they saw fit, engage in commerce, and live peaceably alongside one another.

It was designed to “ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

United States Constitution

Although delegates disagreed on many points (for example, how to balance the power between the large and small states), they produced a document that they believed gave their proposed national government the necessary power to protect freedom while shackling it with the necessary restrictions to keep it from becoming a tyranny. John Adams wrote John Jay from his diplomatic assignment in Europe:

“A result of accommodation and compromise cannot be supposed perfectly to coincide with everyone’s idea of perfection…But, as all the great principles necessary to order, liberty, and safety are respected in it, and provision is made for corrections and amendments as they may be found necessary, I confess I hope to hear of its adoption by all the states” (John Adams to John Jay, December 16, 1787).

Is the United States Too Devoted to the Constitution?

A new book argues that worship of the constitution has distorted our politics..

A photo illustration of a horn blasting confetti and pieces of the constitution

Which version of the Constitution will shape America’s future? Emboldened coalitions on the right purport to tether the country’s tomorrows to the original meanings of an eighteenth-century Constitution—or to so-called natural law principles that are even older. Anxious liberals, by contrast, hold out frayed hopes that a living Constitution will be able to translate the nation’s constitutional history into a new century. An increasingly vocal cadre on the left proposes something altogether different—to scrap the whole arrangement, to make a clean break from a tarnished constitutional tradition by marginalizing the Supreme Court and doing away with the project of the Constitution entirely.

In his new book, The Constitutional Bind , lawyer and political theorist Aziz Rana adds his voice to this swelling chorus, urging that a truly emancipatory politics requires breaking free from the U.S. constitutional project. Rana takes aim at what he calls the worship of the Constitution. U.S. politics today, he contends, idealizes the Constitution to its own detriment. Our political formations—especially those on the left—trim their sails in advance of doing battle by accepting the charter’s historical compromises. But such compromises, Rana says, come at a galling democratic cost. They grant unelected justices on the Supreme Court unwarranted authority over the basic terms of our social life. And they sustain voting inequities in the Electoral College and the Senate, which confer unwarranted representation on rural states with disproportionately white and conservative populations.

As late as the first decades of the twentieth century, Rana proposes, Americans took part in a more robust debate over the Constitution, one that nurtured a wild profusion of alternative political visions. The most promising of those visions, in Rana’s eyes, chafed at and often even rejected the Constitution as a parochial and limiting framework. In the middle third of the twentieth century, however, U.S. politics marginalized the political formations that were most critical of the Constitution’s basic terms. And since the middle of the twentieth century, Rana argues, constitutional politics has shape-shifted into a kind of idolatry. Constitutional devotion has sustained American global empire, supported white ethno-nationalism, justified security panics, and cabined real democracy. Constitutional fetishism, according to Rana, sustains “a fundamentally undemocratic order” by granting the Constitution undue “immunity from challenge”; it produces an anti-democratic “cultural genuflection” before a Supreme Court that supports the interests of elites over the liberation of the masses. We are, Rana tells us, bound “by a narrow constitutional narrative” that constrains our collective life and imposes severe limits on our aspirations for true freedom and equality.

Rana’s account is charismatic and forceful on every page. His book conveys the moral weight of arguments against an order that murdered Indigenous peoples, sustained the enslavement of millions of people of African descent, enshrined patriarchy in law, and adopted racial exclusions that made immigrants from Asia ineligible for citizenship. Rana urges us to free ourselves of the charter that sponsored such evils and to chart a new course toward an emancipatory politics, untethered from the crimes of its history. Yet at the heart of the book lies a conundrum. Is there a viable alternative focal point for American democratic politics? Or are shrewd, disillusioned strategists of political change well advised to draw on an imperfect document to make the world a better place?

Rana would have us see veneration of the Constitution as a relatively recent phenomenon. Fighting over the Constitution, he observes, is almost as old as the document itself. In 1788, the charter’s anti-federalist critics literally burned the document in the streets. Fifty-five years later, in 1843, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison condemned it as a covenant with death for its compromises on slavery.

The Constitution had its ardent defenders from the beginning, but the basis for today’s Constitution worship began to emerge in the 1850s and 1860s. As scholars like Garry Wills and the late Robert Ferguson showed , Abraham Lincoln and a generation of anti-slavery constitutionalists argued that liberty and equality were woven into America’s constitutional compact. Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg address conjured a constitutional order committed to the values enshrined 87 years before in the Declaration of Independence—a “nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” After Lincoln’s assassination, the Thirteenth , Fourteenth , and Fifteenth Amendments wrote these values into the charter’s basic law.

Historians have long observed that in practice the post–Civil War Constitution failed to live up to the anti-slavery ideals of freedom and equality. Rana’s further point is that the document remained hotly contested even in theory. Radical political movements from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth often derided the Constitution as an anti-democratic obstacle to liberation. The Socialist Party of America, for example, conceived of the Constitution and the courts as cogs in the state’s exploitative capitalist machinery; the party’s candidate for president in 1916, Allan L. Benson, condemned a document “by the rich for the rich” in his book Our Dishonest Constitution. Critics of American militarism like ACLU co-founder, feminist, and socialist Crystal Eastman emphasized that peace was essential to human flourishing, to be secured through a system of international cooperation rather than through any one state’s laws. Revolutionary unions like the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, fought to seize ownership of the means of production; the Constitution’s protections for the bosses’ property rights, they contended, were a form of legalized robbery from the exploited workers.

In their efforts to maintain independent sovereign nations, Indigenous peoples have been especially fierce critics of the Constitution’s imperial ambitions. Indeed, in Rana’s account, it is Indigenous peoples who, perhaps best of all, have been able to grasp the Constitution’s true structure. Tuscarora Chief Clinton Rickard, for example, resisted the extension of U.S. citizenship—and thus the extension of the Constitution’s reach—as what Rana calls a “negation of Indigenous self-determination.” Rickard insisted, “citizenship was in our own nations.”

Perhaps most spectacularly, American Communists for a time offered a similar self-determination critique of the Constitution, proposing nothing less than to break off part of the United States. Following the party line from the Sixth Congress of the Third International in Moscow in 1928, Communists described a crescent-shaped swath of the South, from Virginia south and west as far as Arkansas, as a nation of African peoples colonized by white capitalists. Self-determination for the so-called Black Belt became a watchword for the party faithful—although support among Southern Black people for national self-determination was modest. Rana’s point is that ferment in the first decades of the twentieth century made available a form of dissent from the framers’ charter that was so radical as to contemplate undoing the Union.

Modern attitudes toward the Constitution began to take shape, Rana contends, in the early twentieth century. World War I brought an era of compulsory patriotism, when President Woodrow Wilson vigorously repressed the world of radical constitutional critique: Wilson’s Department of Justice indicted over 2,000 Americans on Espionage Act charges, convicting more than 1,000 of them, including Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs and virtually the entire leadership of the IWW. Many of the Constitution’s most vociferous critics fled the country, were deported, or found themselves in prison.

World War II served to entrench the view of the Constitution as a legitimator of U.S. power, Rana writes. The Supreme Court’s famous 1937 decision to uphold Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal suggested that a charter mostly written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could adapt to modern social problems. In the years that followed, the New Deal court began to require that states respect individual rights like the First Amendment’s religious freedoms and the Fourth Amendment’s freedom from unreasonable search and seizure—rights that until that point only the federal government had to assure. A new generation of free speech decisions at the court lavished attention on liberty in wartime, overturning flag salute mandates and reversing the denaturalization of Communists. This expansion of freedoms at home, contrasted with totalitarian threats abroad, seemed to instill an entire generation with respect for the Constitution as a document for all ages, tough, resilient, and versatile.

Cold War geopolitical imperatives turned respect into outright adoration. As the legal scholar and historian Mary Dudziak showed in her book Cold War Civil Rights in 2000, decisions like Brown v. Board of Education arose in part out of America’s efforts to style itself as the leader of the free world. Whereas their predecessors had participated in the construction of American apartheid, the justices now proceeded to denounce Jim Crow as unconstitutional. The court also recognized new constitutional rights to privacy in the use of birth control ( Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965) and in the right to have an abortion ( Roe v. Wade in 1973). Criminal procedure decisions like Mapp v. Ohio (1961) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) created rights against the police. Cases such as Monroe v. Pape (1961) and Bivens v. United States (1971) recognized new rights to sue government officials for constitutional violations. Free speech decisions like Yates v. United States (1957) and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) narrowed the government’s power to prosecute radicals.

All in all, a generation of postwar decisions made the Supreme Court and the Constitution appealing sites for liberal political mobilization. As Chief Justice Earl Warren put it early in his term, the Cold War put the entire U.S. system on trial. The court and the Constitution seemed to rise to the challenge. As Rana writes, lawyers and law professors by the 1970s “did more than simply treat decisions like Brown v. Board of Education as morally well-meaning. They elevated various Warren court cases, with Brown as the centerpiece, to the status of exalted texts.”

At The New York Times Magazine , journalist Anthony Lewis wrote in 1962 that the court had become the “conscience to the country.” Lewis’s bestselling book on the court’s establishment of a right to a lawyer in criminal cases, Gideon’s Trumpet , cast the court as a mighty instrument of justice. (The book became a television movie starring Henry Fonda.) At Yale Law School, dean Eugene V. Rostow praised the court for convening a “vital national seminar” on the country’s most sacred values. For the great liberal institutions of the age, the Warren court infused the Constitution and its authoritative robed interpreters, as Rana puts it, with a kind of “hallowed status.”

In Rana’s telling, the New Deal and the Warren court offered apparent successes but ultimately served to truncate the political imagination. The gains afforded by such cases, considerable though they may have been, fostered fidelity to a Constitution that closed down more radical opportunities. Whereas pre–New Deal social mobilizations critiqued the constitutional order, later movements made crucial compromises with it.

Midcentury labor leaders like Walter Reuther and Sidney Hillman aimed not to replace the constitutional order, but instead to gain for labor some of the wealth afforded by the order that existed. In the Treaty of Detroit , the UAW’s agreement with General Motors set the pattern for future union contracts: Labor would gain strong middle-class wages, job security, and health and retirement benefits, in exchange for dropping its more radical demands. Gone from labor’s lexicon were bolder aspirations such as joint ownership of the means of production or a robust social safety net enshrined in federal law. Rana asserts that such compromises entailed a grave mistake, cutting labor off from more fundamental goals like achieving a true industrial democracy.

A photo illustration of the constitution in the form of banner style flags

The NAACP’s legal campaign to desegregate schools, in Rana’s account, made a parallel mistake. Beginning in the 1910s, the organization had helped to establish constitutional rights for Black criminal defendants, to ban race-based residential zoning, and to contest whites-only primary elections in the South. Yet, Rana argues, the organization’s strategy of working through the courts limited what the NAACP could set out to achieve. NAACP lawyers could win anti-discrimination victories, but they could not launch more foundational attacks on race-based injustice. In cases like Brown v. Board , he asserts, the Warren court gave Black people in the United States court-enforced rules against bigotry without building a foundation for genuine political and economic power.

Rana champions instead radical alternatives like Black nationalists’ 1960s resurrection of the old self-determination idea—“not just US civil rights, but decolonization ,” Rana writes. For groups like the Black Panthers, anti-discrimination concessions from the Supreme Court would not suffice. Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver called for revolution on the decolonization model, condemning the electoral system of the United States as fundamentally illegitimate. Malcolm X disciples proposed a Republic of New Afrika that would use a United Nations–backed plebiscite and a new constitution—the Code of Umoja, or Code of Unity—to establish a Black territorial nation state in the Deep South. White radicals at Students for a Democratic Society praised such efforts. The “Black Panther Party,” announced SDS in 1969, “is not fighting black people’s struggles only, but is in fact the vanguard in our common struggles against capitalism and imperialism.” Brown v. Board, by comparison, offered a kind of milquetoast politics of accommodation and reform.

Rana’s account both understates the advantages of working with the Constitution and substantially overstates the popularity and prominence of radical groups that have proposed dispensing with it.

In Rana’s telling, organizers and advocates who tilted against the Constitution gave voice to the views of repressed democratic majorities. Yet none of the groups he highlights enjoyed anything like mass appeal, let alone democratic success. The Socialist Party, Rana tells us, was “electorally viable” in the 1910s. But its high-water mark as a share of the popular vote was 6 percent of the presidential vote in 1912. Membership in the IWW in the first half of the 1910s was tiny, ranging from 10,000 to no more than 30,000 people. (In the same years, the more conservative American Federation of Labor boasted two and a half million members.) Two decades later, the Communist Party’s Black Belt self-determination thesis had almost no support among Black people. The policy was imposed on the Communist Party of the United States of America over the objection of its small cohort of Black members; one Black member in Moscow in 1928 said that there were only about 50 Black members in the entire United States. Forty years later, Martin Luther King Jr. warned that the kind of revolution advocated by the Panthers found “no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of the Negroes themselves.”

Constitutional veneration has flourished for far longer than Rana allows. In 1887, on the occasion of the centennial celebration of the Constitution’s framing, the editors of The New York Times wrote of “AN INSPIRED CONSTITUTION,” praising it both for offering equal opportunity to the immigrant masses and for repressing the anarchists of Haymarket. In 1909, The New Republic ’s future co-founder Herbert Croly gushed in The Promise of American Life that “Americans have more reason to be proud” of the Constitution’s “triumph than of any other event in their national history.” Croly’s view, which was wholly unexceptional for the time, was that the “formation of an effective nation out of the thirteen original colonies was a political achievement for which there was no historical precedent.”

Constitutional critique as a political strategy was typically weak, in part because social movements have tended to find that invoking patriotism and the Constitution brings significant payoffs in U.S. politics. The early American Civil Liberties Union, as Laura Weinrib has shown , invoked the Constitution’s free speech clause to advance a radical labor syndicalism. (“Get a lot of good flags” and “talk a good deal about the Constitution,” urged ACLU co-founder Roger Baldwin.) The Highlander Folk School , where organizers like Myles Horton, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. connected Southern agricultural workers to Appalachian socialism and Black emancipation, took Baldwin’s advice to heart. Highlander flew U.S. flags prominently and proudly. So did the Congress of Industrial Organizations. For these groups and many more in the early-twentieth-century left, social mobilization aimed to co-opt and remake the national tradition by elevating its virtues, not to reject it for its ugly vices. In this they followed the efforts of the pre–Civil War anti-slavery constitutionalists. Constitutional veneration is not a new phenomenon, not one conjured in the mid–twentieth century, but a recurring cyclical phenomenon, deployed as a tool by rivals vying for political power.

Rana has a tendency to undervalue the gains that canny strategists on the left have made this way. Mass democratic organizations like the CIO—having been set in motion earlier in the century by many of the radicals Rana’s book admires most—built the midcentury prosperity of the American working class. The NAACP’s racial equality project originated in the same circles that produced the CIO and aimed in its earliest formulations to build an organizable Black working class. When its litigation campaign culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, wealth inequality was nearing its historic low point; union density in the private sector was reaching its high point; and Black households became more likely than white ones to have a member belonging to a labor union. Such moments are evidence that the hard work of leftist visionaries brought astonishing transformations.

For Rana, the existing order hobbles the left while empowering the right. The Constitution, with its anti-democratic features, “fundamentally empowers rule by a minority coalition,” he writes, and makes it “especially difficult for today’s multiracial and largely urban majority coalition to implement widely backed policies.” Recent decisions to overturn reproductive rights and insulate unpopular gun rights from majoritarian politics lend Rana’s position added force. U.S. politics is being reshaped by justices whose power has little democratic basis. Five were nominated by presidents who first reached the White House without winning a popular vote majority. At least four purport to deploy an anti-democratic methodology of original meaning rooted in the values of an older, whiter, patriarchal country. All nine were confirmed by a Senate skewed toward low-population states, the same Senate that blocked popular-vote-winning President Barack Obama from filling an empty seat at the court in 2016.

In the past few years, the court has deployed controversial readings of the Constitution to hobble environmental regulations in the fights against climate change and water pollution, to constrain public health measures during the pandemic, to ban race-based affirmative action, and to undo student debt relief. As I write this, the justices seem poised to dramatically reduce the power of government agencies by stripping them of the power to interpret ambiguous laws in the public interest. The court this term is expected, moreover, to rule that the Constitution curbs federal regulatory power over corporate securities markets.

Yet is abandoning the Constitution the correct response? For conservatives, constitutional veneration has served not as a constraint on the political imagination but as a mobilizing tool. As legal scholars like Jamal Greene, Reva Siegel, and Mary Ziegler have shown, originalism has dominated not because it’s a powerful interpretative method (it’s not) but because of its adoption by an effective and energized political coalition. Ostensible original meanings have turned out to be so capacious and flexible as to permit the construction of a successful political movement under the Constitution’s big tent.

Historically, liberals and the left have deployed the Constitution to build coalitions and make change happen, too, and for good reason. Abandoning America’s national charter to one’s political adversaries has been a recurring temptation, and sometimes a stirring call to justice, but never a winning political strategy. The document establishes the boundaries of the body politic and, for better or worse, shapes its identity, too. No wonder Rana’s history offers a litany of losing efforts to change the world for the better.

As for today, there is little evidence that a suppressed left-wing popular coalition of nonwhite and working-class voters lies in wait, chafing to be unleashed from the Constitution’s constraints. Opinion polls find that Latino voters currently favor former President Donald Trump over Joe Biden. Voters who identify as Asian American are widely seen as turning rightward because of issues like crime and education. By some estimates , 40 percent of nonwhite voters will vote for the conservative Republican presidential candidate in 2024. National surveys regularly find essentially half of all voting-eligible people in the country supporting conservative presidential candidates. We live in a nation of razor-thin electoral margins, even absent the distorting influence of the Senate and the Electoral College.

Under such circumstances, a clean break with the Constitution would be as likely to produce a turn to the right as to the left. Rana acknowledges as much in the book’s surprising final pages: Breaking from the thrust of his historical account, he cautions that right-wing critics have been eager for a new constitutional convention in recent years. Rana therefore counsels against counterproductive anti-Constitution radicalisms, urging instead the formation of a practical coalition for the enactment of social democratic policies, at least for now.

But the case for coalition-building is a more general one. Working within the Constitution has not meant giving in to its worst features. The most successful political projects have reshaped the charter time and again. Changing electoral demographics pose new challenges to the task of adapting the document to our times. But making the best of the Constitution’s content has proved politically indispensable for nearly two and a half centuries. The foreseeable political future belongs to the coalition that wins the struggle for its meaning.

John Fabian Witt is a professor of law and history at Yale. His book Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History won the Bancroft Prize in history in 2013.

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The Constitution of The United States

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The first amendment, the united states constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.

The Constitutional Convention

Section 1: congress.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section 2: The House of Representatives

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers;and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section 3: The Senate

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

Section 4: Elections

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Section 5: Powers and Duties of Congress

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members,and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

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.

Section 6: Rights and Disabilities of Members

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.They 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; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

Section 7: Legislative Process

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Section 8: Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises , to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Section 9: Powers Denied Congress

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

Section 10: Powers Denied to the States

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article III

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in 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 Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;-- to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

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

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Article VII

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Second Amendment

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Third Amendment

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

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.

Fifth Amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Sixth Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Seventh Amendment

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Eighth Amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Ninth Amendment

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

10th Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

11th Amendment

12th Amendment

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. -- The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

13th Amendment

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

14th Amendment

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States , or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

15th Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

16th Amendment

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

17th Amendment

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

18th Amendment

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

19th Amendment

20th Amendment

The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

21st Amendment

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

22nd Amendment

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

23rd Amendment

The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

24th Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

25th Amendment

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

26th Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

27th Amendment

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

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‘Jai Palestine’: Why an Indian MP invoked Gaza war while taking oath

BJP leaders accused Asaduddin Owaisi of violating the Indian Constitution by chanting for Palestine.

Asaduddin Owaisi, president of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen(AIMIM) speaks during a public meeting in Ahmedabad, India,

A usually staid swearing-in procedure where Indian parliamentarians take their oath of office has exploded into a controversy after veteran opposition legislator Asaduddin Owaisi chanted “Jai Palestine” after reading out the pledge on Tuesday.

In Sanskrit, the word “jai” literally translates to victory, but is used more broadly to connote support, so in effect, Owaisi’s slogan amounted to: “Long live Palestine.”

Keep reading

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Parliamentarians from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have accused him of violating the very constitutional pledge he was taking by, according to them, demonstrating loyalty to another nation – a charge Owaisi has denied.

So what really happened, why have Owaisi’s words become controversial, what else happened in the Indian Parliament on Tuesday and what’s next for Owaisi?

What exactly did Owaisi say?

Owaisi took his oath as a member of parliament (MP), alongside 542 other legislators who were declared winners of India’s mammoth national election.

The white kurta-clad Owaisi advanced to the podium in Parliament amid scattered applause from other parliamentarians before reading out his oath in Urdu.

“I, Asaduddin Owaisi, who has been elected as a Lok Sabha member, swear in the name of Allah, that I will remain solemn and loyal to the Constitution of India. I will maintain the supremacy and integrity of India and I will fulfil my duties, assigned to me under this position, with loyalty,” he pledged in Urdu. The Lok Sabha is the directly elected lower house of India’s Parliament.

Then, he chanted “Jai Bhim, Jai Meem, Jai Telangana, Jai Filisteen” before stepping away from the podium.

“Jai Bhim” is a pro-Dalit slogan that refers to Bhimrao Ambedkar, the Dalit founding father of the Indian Constitution. Dalits have historically been at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy. Meem is a part of the Urdu alphabet that transcribes closely to “M” in English, and Owaisi is believed to have been referring to his party, the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) , mostly known just as MIM – pronounced “meem”.

Telangana is the state Owaisi comes from, and Filisteen is the Urdu and Hindi word for Palestine.

Sworn in as member of Lok Sabha for the fifth time. Inshallah I will continue to raise issues of India’s marginalised with sincerity pic.twitter.com/OloVk6D65B — Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) June 25, 2024

Who is Owaisi?

Asaduddin Owaisi has been a five-time MP of the Lok Sabha, from Telangana’s Hyderabad constituency since 2004. He comes from a political family and was preceded by his father, Salahuddin Owaisi, a six-time MP of Hyderabad from 1984 to 2004.

Owaisi is also the president of the AIMIM since 2008. The regional party’s manifesto espouses Muslim rights , the broader rights of all religious minorities, as well as Dalit rights. Owaisi is also known for his fiery oratory in Parliament.

During this election, AIMIM was neither part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) spearheaded by the BJP, nor was it allied with the opposition INDIA alliance led by the Congress Party.

Could the Indian MP be penalised?

In evoking Palestine, and effectively invoking Israel’s war on Gaza, Owaisi drew criticism and allegations that he had signalled his allegiance to Palestine.

BJP members argued that Owaisi flouted the Indian Constitution. The BJP’s information technology head, Amit Malviya posted on X on Tuesday: “As per extant rules, Asaduddin Owaisi can be disqualified from his Lok Sabha membership, for demonstrating adherence to a foreign State, that is Palestine”.

Malviya posted a snippet of Article 102 of the Indian Constitution, that lays out grounds for disqualification from Parliament, underlining a clause of the article that says a person shall be disqualified for showing adherence to a foreign state.

As per extant rules, Asaduddin Owaisi can be disqualified from his Lok Sabha membership, for demonstrating adherence to a foreign State, that is Palestine. Please note: @LokSabhaSectt pic.twitter.com/wh7bYbep8p — Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) June 25, 2024

Yet, other experts said Owaisi had broken no rule – even if he had deviated from convention, like many other politicians on Tuesday.

“I don’t think [Owaisi can be disqualified] because while taking the oath, nearly all members have raised different kinds of slogans,” political analyst and Hindi professor Apoorvanand told Al Jazeera.

Apoorvanand explained that while being sworn into office after earlier elections , parliamentarians would typically confine themselves to the oath. “This time, the election was different and different issues were at stake. The atmosphere became different and members felt the need to express themselves”. The election was a tense, high-strung contest between the BJP and the Congress-led INDIA alliance, in which Modi’s party failed to win a majority for the first time after a decade in power, but managed to form a government in coalition with allies.

Apoorvanand also pointed out that Owaisi’s Palestine chant had come after he had completed his official oath – in which he had pledged allegiance to India.

“Hailing Palestine does not violate the Constitution of India. You’ve taken the oath and after that, if you say anything, it’s not on record,” said Apoorvanand.

Even the BJP’s Radha Mohan Singh, who was in the chairperson’s seat, tried to reassure angry BJP parliamentarians that slogans made after the oath-taking would not go on the record.

Still, local media reported that Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said he would review the rules regarding this issue.

Did other MPs say anything controversial?

The BJP’s Chhatra Pal Singh Gangwar ended his oath with “Jai Hindu Rashtra” (Long live the Hindu nation). The BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) , has long called for India to be made a Hindu state.

Gangwar’s chant drew protest slogans from lawmakers belonging to the INDIA alliance. India is constitutionally a secular nation. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav objected to the chant, saying that “it was against the values of the Constitution.”

Another BJP member, Atul Garg, said “Narendra Modi Zindabad” [long live Modi] after he took his oath. Heckled by the opposition, he returned to the podium and said “Dr Hedgewar Zindabad,” referring to Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS.

Did some MPs take oath with a copy of the Constitution?

Many opposition legislators, including Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, and Yadav, took the oath while holding out a copy of the Indian Constitution in their hands as a sign of protest against the alleged excesses of the BJP under Modi.

However, Modi and other BJP leaders hit back, accusing the Congress of hypocrisy. Tuesday also marked the anniversary of the imposition of a state of national emergency by then-Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. During the state of emergency that was lifted in 1977, thousands of critics and political activists were arrested, civil liberties were suspended, and the press faced a crackdown.

“Those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess their love for our Constitution,” Modi wrote in an X post on Tuesday.

Apoorvanand argued that the myriad debates that erupted out of Tuesday’s oath-taking ceremony pointed to a more complex reality confronting India.

“The election hasn’t ended yet, unlike previous years,” he said. “This battle is continuing and has not ended with the declaration of results.”

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