PATIENT
U.S. Constitution
WRITTEN
Philadelphia, summer 1787
IN FORCE
1789
LENGTH
About 4,500 words, seven articles
CHIEF COMPLAINT
The first government couldn't tax, couldn't regulate trade and couldn't get a vote through. What replaced it?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
A set of compromises worked out over one hot summer by delegates who disagreed about nearly everything. Congress called the Convention to revise the Articles of Confederation; the delegates drafted a new frame of government instead. Many of the features people find odd today (the Senate, the Electoral College, the way states keep power) are the seams of those deals.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
CONGRESS
Article I, and first on purpose. The House by population, the Senate two per state: the Great Compromise.
PRESIDENT
Article II. One executive, four years, and an indirect way of picking him through electors.
COURTS
Article III. One Supreme Court, and the rest left to Congress. Judicial review came later, in Marbury v. Madison.
STATES
Article IV. How states treat each other, and how new ones join.
CHANGE
Articles V to VII. Amendment by supermajority, federal law supreme over state law, and the ratification rule.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —The word 'slave' never appears in the original text. The thing is everywhere in it.
- —The number of Supreme Court justices is not in the Constitution. Congress sets it.
- —Every amendment so far came through Congress. The states-called convention route has never been used.
- —The Convention's mandate was to revise the Articles, and it went further. Whether that was legitimate was argued then and still is.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Read Article I section 1, Article II section 1 and Article V first, then the Supremacy Clause. Every claim in this guide is tagged Settled, Disputed or Popular myth with a source, and the full Study Guide gives both sides of the live arguments at equal length.