# Constitution of the United States of America/Annotated/Introduction/Overview of Basic Principles Underlying the Constitution

Online at https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/intro.7-1/ALDE_00000028/
As compared to the constitutions of the fifty states or of other countries, the United States Constitution is a short document that, with its current amendments, contains only a little more than 7,500 words and has grown very little since its initial enactment. The federal Constitution consists of three central provisions: a short introductory paragraph called the “Preamble”; seven “Articles” that comprise the original Constitution that came into force in 1789; and twenty-seven “Amendments” that were subsequently added to the document. The first three Articles of the Constitution establish a Federal Government consisting of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches. It creates a tripartite system of government wherein each of the three federal branches is granted powers but given some ability to check the powers of the other two branches. Article IV generally addresses the relationship between the federal and state governments, and the remaining Articles establish, among other things, how the Constitution can be amended, the supremacy of the Constitution and federal law with respect to state law, and the process for ratifying the Constitution. The Amendments begin with the first ten amendments or the Bill of Rights and protect certain individual rights, such as freedom of speech and the right against unreasonable searches and seizures. Ratified in the period following the Civil War, the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments or the Reconstruction Amendments accomplish several objectives, including abolishing slavery, prohibiting states from denying equal protection or due process of the law to any person, and protecting certain voting rights. The remaining amendments vary greatly in subject matter, addressing such diverse issues as selecting a President; the income tax; the manufacturing, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors; voting rights; and compensating Members of Congress.
While much of the Constitution consists of a general framework for the federal government’s form and functions, a central, and perhaps counterintuitive, purpose of the Constitution is to restrain the government, by, among other things, immunizing certain values and principles from government interference. Moreover, as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Marbury v. Madison, the Constitution is fundamentally “a superior, paramount law” that is “unchangeable by ordinary means.” In fact, changing the Constitution requires that either two-thirds of both houses of Congress or two-thirds of the states represented at a constitutional convention propose a constitutional amendment, which must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states to take effect. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in a 2013 interview, it is difficult to amend the Constitution, which was a deliberate choice by the Framers to preserve certain fundamental and cherished rights from majoritarian whims. In this vein, the Constitution is often described as a higher law that enumerates the Nation’s basic values.
Given this underlying purpose of the Constitution, this introductory essay examines two fundamental questions, with which the Supreme Court, scholars, and other constitutional actors perennially wrestle: (1) what are the Nation’s basic values that the Constitution protects; and (2) who should serve as the final interpreter of the Constitution. While neither question has any firm or definite answers, debates over the Constitution, both on and off the Court, often touch on these two fundamental issues.
With regard to the first question, the Constitution Annotated details the unique history of each provision of the Constitution and how it has been understood. A constitution, by its very nature, ideally has “an inner unity” and “reflects certain overarching principles and fundamental decisions to which individual provisions are subordinate.” And, indeed, the Constitution of the United States broadly embraces three interrelated but distinct concepts that define American democracy. First, separation, or division, of power among the three branches of government underlies many of the Constitution’s provisions and reflects the Framers’ views that the Federal Government’s power should be limited and diffused among the three branches. Second, the Constitution is also undergirded by the related, but distinct concept of federalism, which is the allocation of power between the national and state governments, with the Federal Government having limited powers and the states retaining a general police power. Third, the Constitution protects certain individual rights from government interference.
With respect to the second question—whose interpretation of the Constitution is dispositive—the answer has been elaborated upon and debated throughout the Nation’s history. For instance, one view, which Thomas Jefferson, among others, espoused, is that each branch of government should interpret the Constitution with respect to itself. By contrast, under the “judicial supremacy” view, which the Supreme Court has adopted at times, the Supreme Court is the exclusive and final interpreter of the Constitution. Finally, the “popular constitutionalist” view holds that people and institutions outside of the Judicial Branch should play a larger role in interpreting the Constitution.
How these fundamental questions of constitutional law are answered inform many of the constitutional interpretations discussed in the Constitution Annotated. This essay, while not attempting to provide definitive answers to the two questions, provides a brief overview of two cross-cutting issues that form the basis for modern constitutional law and introduces the discussions that follow in the Constitution Annotated.