United States Constitution

United States Constitution

United States
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The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. The first three Articles of the Constitution establish the rules and separate powers of the three branches of the federal government: a legislature, the bicameral Congress; an executive branch led by the President; and a federal judiciary headed by the Supreme Court. The last four Articles frame the principle of federalism. The Tenth Amendment confirms its federal characteristics.

The Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ratified by conventions in eleven states. It went into effect on March 4, 1789. The first ten constitutional amendments ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1791 are known as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution has been amended seventeen additional times (for a total of 27 amendments) and its principles are applied in courts of law by judicial review.

The Constitution guides American law and political culture. Its writers composed the first constitution of its kind incorporating recent developments in constitutional theory with multiple traditions, and their work influenced later writers of national constitutions. It has been amended over time and it is supplemented and interpreted by a large body of United States constitutional law. Recent impulses for reform center on concerns for extending democracy and balancing the federal budget.

Read more about United States Constitution:  Ratification, Original Text, The Amendments, Judicial Review, Civic Religion, Worldwide, Criticisms

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or constitution:

    “We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!”
    —Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    “What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
    —Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    “Nullification ... means insurrection and war; and the other states have a right to put it down.”
    —Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    “Our Constitution ... was not a perfect instrument, it is not perfect yet; but it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men of all races, colors and creeds could build our solid structure of democracy.”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)