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Reading of the United States Constitution of 1787. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. [3] It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the federal government.
The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787. [1] Although the convention was intended to revise the league of states and first system of government under the Articles of Confederation, [2] the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York, was to create a new ...
In light of the repeated abuses by ex post facto laws passed by the state legislatures, 1783–1787, the Constitution prohibited ex post facto laws and bills of attainder to protect United States citizen property rights and right to a fair trial. Congressional power of the purse was protected by forbidding taxes or restraint on interstate ...
The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of Confederation.
to enforce "by appropriate legislation" the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution (a function of the Constitution's Necessary and Proper clause); [39] to propose, by a two-thirds vote, constitutional amendments for ratification by three-fourths of the states pursuant to the terms of Article V. [38]
Madison, a delegate from Virginia and future President of the United States, who due to his role in creating the Virginia Plan became known as the "Father of the Constitution", purposely sat up front, stating in the preface to his notes that "in pursuance of the task I had assumed I chose a seat in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right & left hands.
But that existed in 1787; in many of the states, the Constitution was just barely ratified. I do not minimize the difficulty of significant change in any of these ways.
Thirty-three amendments to the Constitution of the United States have been proposed by the United States Congress and sent to the states for ratification since the Constitution was put into operation on March 4, 1789. Twenty-seven of those, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, are part of the Constitution.