Constitution: United States Constitution and Supreme Court Essay

Submitted By gelo0609
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Pages: 4

The longest article in the Constitution vests legislative power in the Senate and the House of Representatives. It describes the organization of Congress and lists its specific powers, known as enumerated or delegated powers. Through the necessary and proper clause (also called the elastic clause), Congress can make laws needed to carry out its enumerated powers. Article I also lists the powers denied to Congress and the states.The full faith and credit clause requires that the legislative and judicial actions of one state be honored by the other states. Additionally, a citizen of any state has the same privileges as citizens of all the other states. Article IV also provides for adding new states to the union, guarantees each state a republican form of government, and ensures protection against invasion or domestic violence.The Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties entered into by the United States are the supreme law of the land. This is known as the supremacy clause.The Constitutional Convention began deliberations on May 25, 1787. The delegates were generally convinced that an effective central government with a wide range of enforceable powers must replace the weaker Congress established by the Articles of Confederation. The high quality of the delegates to the convention was remarkable. As Thomas Jefferson in Paris wrote to John Adams in London, "It really is an assembly of demigods." According to one view, the Framers embraced ambiguity in the constitutional text, since it allows for compromise and cooperation about broad concepts rather than specific circumstances.The Second Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to keep their own weapons apart from state-run arsenals.[l] Once the new Constitution began government, states petitioned Congress to propose amendments including militia protections. New Hampshire’s proposal for amendment was, "Congress shall never disarm any citizen unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion." New York proposed, "... a well regulated militia, including the body of the people capable of bearing arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free State."[m] Over time, this amendment has been confirmed by the courts to protect individual rights and used to overturn state legislation regulating hand guns.
Applying the Second Amendment only to the federal government, and not to the states, persisted for much of the nation's early history. It was sustained in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) to support disarming African-Americans holding arms in self-defense from Klansmen in Louisiana. The Supreme Court held, citizens must "look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens from the state, rather than the national, government." Federal protection of an individual interfering with the state’s right to disarm any of its citizens came in Presser v. Illinois (1886). The Supreme Court ruled the citizens were members of the federal militia, as were "all citizens capable of bearing arms." A state cannot "disable the people from performing their duty to the General Government". The Court was harking back to the language establishing a federal militia in 1792.[n]
In 1939,