The supreme law

The Constitution of the United States is the written plan for the country's government. It is the supreme law of the land, which means it is the highest law of all. No other law and no action by any official may go against it. If a federal, state, or local law conflicts with the Constitution, that law is not valid.

The government began working under the Constitution in 1789. It is a short document. It has a short opening statement called the Preamble, seven main parts called articles, and 27 later changes called amendments.

The Constitution does several things at once. It forms the government and defines its parts. Article I creates Congress, which writes the laws. Article II creates the office of the President, who carries the laws out. Article III creates the Supreme Court and allows Congress to set up the lower federal courts, which explain the laws and settle disputes about them.

The Constitution also defines the powers of the government, and it limits them. The government may do only what the Constitution allows. Powers that are not given to the federal government are left to the states or to the people.

Finally, the Constitution protects the basic rights of the people. A few protections are in the original text. Most were added later as amendments, starting with the first ten in 1791.

The people who wrote it did not start from nothing. Many earlier documents influenced the Constitution. They include the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the Mayflower Compact, and the Iroquois Great Law of Peace.

The Articles of Confederation was the country's first plan of government. It was much weaker than the Constitution. If a question asks you to name one document that influenced the Constitution, any one of those documents is correct.

The Constitution begins with a short opening statement called the Preamble. Its first three words are "We the People." The idea of self-government is contained in those three words.

Self-government means the people rule themselves. Power comes from the people, not from a king or a small ruling group. Other names for the same idea are popular sovereignty and consent of the governed: the government may govern only because the people agree to it. It is also an example of a social contract, an agreement between the people and their government.

The people do not vote on every law themselves. They elect representatives to make the laws for them. A country run this way is called a republic, or a representative democracy. The fuller description often used for the United States is a constitution-based federal republic.

Each word in that description matters. "Constitution-based" means a written Constitution sets the rules and the limits. "Federal" means power is shared between the national government and the state governments. "Republic" means the people choose the officials who govern them.

This is why elections matter so much. Members of Congress, governors, and many local officials are chosen directly by voters. Voters also choose the President, but through a system called the Electoral College, where each state's voters choose people who then vote for the President. When people are unhappy with their leaders, the way to change the government is to vote them out.

An amendment is a change or an addition to the Constitution. The people who wrote the Constitution knew the country would change over time, so they built in a way to change the document itself. That way is called the amendment process.

Changing the Constitution is possible, but it was made deliberately difficult. First the amendment must be proposed. Congress can propose one if two-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds of the House of Representatives agree. Two-thirds of the state legislatures can also ask for a special convention to propose amendments, although that method has never been used.

Then the amendment must be ratified, which simply means approved. Three-fourths of the states must approve it. With 50 states today, that is 38 states. Only then does the amendment become part of the Constitution and carry the same force as the rest of it.

The Constitution has twenty-seven amendments. The first ten were added in 1791 and are called the Bill of Rights. The other seventeen were added over the following two centuries, and the most recent one was ratified in 1992.

The amendments record how the country has changed. One ended slavery. Others said the right to vote cannot be taken away because of a person's race or sex. One limited the President to two terms. One banned alcohol and a later one cancelled that ban, which shows that even an amendment can be undone by another amendment.

Two short answers are worth memorizing. An amendment is a change or addition to the Constitution. Changes to the Constitution are made through amendments, that is, through the amendment process.