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The document was drafted by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress in mid-June 1777 and was adopted by the full Congress in mid-November of that year. Ratification by the 13 colonies took more than three years and was completed March 1, 1781.
"History of the Document". Framers of the Constitution. National Archives and Records Administration. pp. 235– 241. ISBN 978-0-911333-43-5. Myers, Denys P. (1961). "History of the Printed Archetype". The Constitution of the United States of America. Congressional Serial Set. No. 12349. S. Doc.
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.
The United States Constitution and its amendments comprise hundreds of clauses which outline the functioning of the United States Federal Government, the political relationship between the states and the national government, and affect how the United States federal court system interprets the law. When a particular clause becomes an important ...
Additionally, when interpreting a legal document, courts are usually interested in understanding the document as its authors did and their motivations for creating it; [10] as a result, the courts have cited the Preamble for evidence of the history, intent and meaning of the Constitution as it was understood by the Founders. [11]
Overall, the document conformed to the resolutions adopted by the Convention, though some portions were rephrased during the process. [5] Even after issuing this report, the committee continued to meet off and on until early September. The draft constitution was discussed, section by section and clause by clause.
Early in its history, in Marbury v.Madison (1803) and Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Supreme Court of the United States declared that the judicial power granted to it by Article III of the United States Constitution included the power of judicial review, to consider challenges to the constitutionality of a State or Federal law.
The document was written at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and was ratified through a series of state conventions held in 1787 and 1788. Since 1789, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; particularly important amendments include the ten amendments of the United States Bill of Rights and the three Reconstruction Amendments.