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Timestamp: 2019-04-22 14:22:16+00:00

Document:
On June 11, 1776, the same day that it created a five-member committee to prepare the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress appointed a thirteen-member committee (one from each state) . . .
The 1976 Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo struck down important provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which had been significantly amended in 1974. The election law revisi . . .
In 1891 Congress passed the Circuit Court of Appeals Act, which established a new level of federal courts between the circuit and district courts and the Supreme Court. Relieving Supreme Court justice . . .
The controversy over the line-item veto, which had occupied considerable time and energy in American politics for almost two decades (see document 182), finally reached partial resolution in April 199 . . .
The United States Constitution was written at a convention that Congress called on February 21, 1787, for the purpose of recommending amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Every state but Rhode . . .
On June 11, 1776, the responsibility to “prepare a declaration” of independence was assigned by the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, to five members: John Adams, Benjamin Fra . . .
We proceed now to an examination of the judiciary department of the proposed government. . . .
In 1969 Abe Fortas became the first Supreme Court justice to resign under threat of impeachment. A prominent Washington, D.C., lawyer, Fortas was the winning counsel in Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963 an . . .
The Supreme Court's decision in Gibbons v. Ogden has had a profound impact on the ability of Congress to regulate commerce. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, gave Congress the power . . .
The Constitution provides in Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 that members of the House or Senate are protected from arrest in all cases “except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace” whe . . .
Only a few Senate and Supreme Court specialists are familiar with Haver v. Yaker, a relatively obscure Supreme Court decision from 1869. It is seldom mentioned in textbooks or encyclopedias, but it is . . .
This seemingly simple case about an immigrant who came to the United States as a student and sought to stay in this country when his visa expired had a profound effect on congressional power and Congr . . .
James Madison's Notes of Debate in the Federal Convention of 1787 is the best single document for understanding the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution and how they expected Congress to func . . .
Although the Constitution created the Supreme Court, it said much less about the Court than about Congress and the president. With the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress set up a system of lower federal . . .
The Judiciary Act of 1925 established the jurisdictional rules that currently shape the Supreme Court's workload. The act gave the Court greater control of its docket by reducing the types of cases th . . .
The Supreme Court in Kilbourn v. Thompson declared that a member of Congress could not be sued for matters related to congressional duties and responsibilities. At the same time the decision placed li . . .
McGrain v. Daugherty is one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions ever rendered on the subject of Congress's constitutional power to conduct investigations and compel the testimony of witnes . . .
The National Labor Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1935, gave employees the right to bargain collectively with their employers regarding wages or other conditions of employment. This was a major . . .
In Nixon v. United States the Supreme Court made an important ruling regarding the Senate's power of impeachment. It upheld the Senate's right to determine its own rules with respect to the impeachmen . . .
The case of Powell v. McCormack was fraught with emotion and public controversy. The Supreme Court's decision in this case confirmed the strict nature of the constitutionally defined qualifications fo . . .
In 1973 the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision declared that women have a qualified constitutional right to decide to have an abortion. The highly emotional issue reached the Court in two cases brought b . . .
The Supreme Court, empowered by Title 28, Section 2071 of the U.S. Code, sets its own rules covering the activities of the Court. These rules, first established in 1790, are revised from time to time, . . .
Few decisions in the history of the Supreme Court have been as momentous as the Dred Scott decision in terms of its impact on American history and in terms of its affect on the actions of Congress. Fo . . .
The Senate's rejection of President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert H. Bork, a judge on the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, to a seat on the Supreme Court in 1987 was a bitter battl . . .
When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, he launched a series of bold programs designed to speed recovery from the Great Depression. Some of these programs were highly controversial. One, . . .
Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.) played a key role in passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, both behind the scenes in negotiations and on the floor of the Senate. Using the words of the Fr . . .
Immediately after the Civil War, Congress had to deal with the many serious problems of reconstructing the Union, addressing the economic crisis of a nation torn apart by war, and grappling with the p . . .
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, introduced at the request of the Eisenhower administration, is not as sweeping in scope as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it was the important first step toward creati . . .
The Eighteenth Amendment was the culmination of a century-long temperance movement in the United States that saw alcohol consumption as the root of many of the nation's social, economic, political, an . . .
This amendment is the third of the trio of constitutional amendments passed near the end of the Civil War and during Reconstruction to guarantee former slaves the rights of citizenship. The Thirteenth . . .
Members of Congress, executive branch officers, and judicial branch officers are required to take an oath of office, as provided in Article VI, Clause 3, of the Constitution. The first law that Congre . . .
In 1866 Congress was in the hands of the Republican Party, representing the northern states, while the president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, was a former Democrat sympathetic to the South. T . . .
When James Madison was a delegate to the Federal Convention in 1787 he did not believe a bill of rights was a necessary component of the new Constitution. While most of the delegates agreed with him, . . .
The Kansas-Nebraska Act completely undermined the Missouri Compromise (see document 53) and set the stage for the coming of the Civil War. The act, originally introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas (D- . . .
The Missouri Compromise was Congress's first major attempt to deal with the issue of the expansion of slavery in the United States. It marks a significant juncture in the struggle between the North an . . .
In the congressional elections of 1914 and 1916, the temperance movement was finally successful in helping to elect enough members of the House and Senate who would push for a constitutional amendment . . .
The Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote. The Constitution never prohibited women from voting. It was silent on the subject. Women's ability to exercise the right to vote had been l . . .
The Seventeenth Amendment changed the manner in which senators were elected by providing for direct election by the people. Until the ratification of this amendment, senators were elected by the legis . . .
One sentence is all it took to amend the Constitution and give Congress the power to collect tax based on income “from whatever source derived.” This is one amendment to the Constitution t . . .
The first of three constitutional amendments written with the purpose of ending slavery and guaranteeing the rights of the ex-slaves (see also documents 79 and 83), the Thirteenth Amendment finally la . . .
Following in the wake of the constitutional crises created when the presidential election of 1800 was decided by the House of Representatives (see document 32), Congress initiated a reform of the way . . .
Constitutional amendments usually come from the judiciary committees of the House or Senate, but the Twentieth Amendment originated in 1923 in the House Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, under th . . .
The Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, is the only amendment ever ratified to undo an earlier amendment, the Eighteenth (see document 113). It is also the only amendment to be ratifie . . .
It took the states 203 years to ratify the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which decrees that no salary increase can take place until an election cycle for the House of Representatives intervenes. James Mad . . .
Until the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the Constitution had left determination of the minimum voting age to the discretion of the states. Most states set that minimum at age twenty-one. During World War II . . .
Congress has the constitutional authority to “exercise exclusive Legislation” regarding the District of Columbia (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17). Since the federal government moved to th . . .
In the Watkins v. United States decision, delivered by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court recognized and affirmed the broad powers of Congress to conduct investigations, but at the same time . . .

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