Search results
Political system - Constitution, Government, Law: Constitutional government is defined by the existence of a constitution—which may be a legal instrument or merely a set of fixed norms or principles generally accepted as the fundamental law of the polity—that effectively controls the exercise of political power. The essence of constitutionalism is the control of power by its distribution ...
3 days ago · constitution, the body of doctrines and practices that form the fundamental organizing principle of a political state. In some cases, such as the United States, the constitution is a specific written document. In others, such as the United Kingdom, it is a collection of documents, statutes, and traditional practices that are generally accepted ...
See Jack M. Balkin, Constitutional Redemption 239 (2011) (noting that the Constitution serves a function as a basic law or framework for governance that allocates powers and responsibilities). a central, and perhaps counterintuitive, purpose of the Constitution is to restrain the government, by, among other things, immunizing certain values and ...
- Article I assigns the responsibility for making laws to the Legislative Branch (Congress). Congress is divided into two parts, or “Houses,” the House of Representatives and the Senate.
- Article II details the Executive Branch and the offices of the President and Vice President. It lays down rules for electing the President (through the Electoral College), eligibility (must be a natural-born citizen at least 35 years old), and term length.
- Article III establishes the Judicial Branch with the U.S. Supreme Court as the federal court system’s highest court. It specifies that Federal judges be appointed for life unless they commit a serious crime.
- Article IV outlines states’ powers in relationship to each other. States have the authority to create and enforce their own laws but must respect and help enforce the laws of other states.
constitutionalism, doctrine that a government’s authority is determined by a body of laws or constitution. Although constitutionalism is sometimes regarded as a synonym for limited government, that is only one interpretation and by no means the most prominent one historically. More generally constitutionalism refers to efforts to prevent ...
At the Constitutional Convention, the Framers debated these issues. Their ultimate solution was to separate the powers of government among three branches—legislative, executive, and judicial—so that each branch had to cooperate with the others in order to accomplish policymaking goals. For example, although the executive branch commands the ...
People also ask
What does constitutionalism mean?
How did the US Constitution structure the government?
What is a constitution & why is it important?
What does the constitution say about democracy?
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 ...
