1819 was a busy year for Marshall and a depressing and shocking year for strict constructionists. Marshall ruled in the case of Sturges v. Crown-in shield that federal jurisdiction over contracts applied to both states and private individuals. In other words, the Supreme Court could determine if state laws in…
Why was the Bill of Rights added to the constitution? The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution, and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of…
Bicameral Legislature: Definition. Bicameral system, or bicameralism, a system of government in which the legislature comprises two houses. The Framers derived much of the language for the Constitution from British examples, and the bicameral system was in some respects similar to the British Parliament. John Dickinson, for example, likened the…
Why was the Electoral College Created? Paterson’s plan, also known as the New Jersey Plan, envisioned a supreme court, a unicameral legislature with a one-state, one-vote provision, and divided executive power between two presidents, appointed by the legislature and serving separate terms, who had no veto power. The New Jersey…
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The term "freedom of expression" is sometimes used synonymously but includes any act of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or…
The most famous line in the Declaration of Independence is “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . . . ” But the Founders meant something very different by that phrase than most of us have been taught to believe. It was written, of…
The only level of government that was to be directly responsive to the people was the House of Representatives. It was granted the most constitutional power but was to be checked by the executive branch, the upper house of the Senate, and the judicial branch. Madison warned against a “pure…
Enlightenment Ideas are found throughout the Constitution. In particular, the Founders were concerned with restricting Federal power to eliminate the possibility of tyranny; an example of this is the reservation to Congress of the power of declaring war, a power that has been essentially ignored since 1945. Yet to the…
The Somerset v Stewart case brief is a famous judgment of the Court of King's Bench in 1772 on labor law and human rights. Somerset v Stewart Case Brief Still more pertinent is the precedent established in Sommersett’s Case (1772), an episode in British jurisprudence that made its way into…
What is the constitutional amendment process? The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. Checks and balances: Constitutional…