Foundational Law · the Constitution of the United States
The Constitution is the foundation every other layer of law rests on. It builds the three branches — Congress (Article I), the President (Article II), and the courts (Article III) — splits power so each checks the others, and sets the rights no statute, rule, or regulation may cross. Informational only, not legal advice.
How U.S. law is layered — and how the layers check each other
Four layers, three branches, one system. Each layer draws its authority from the one above it, and the courts sit across all of them.
The checks run between the layers: courts strike statutes and rules as unconstitutional (judicial review); Congress amends the Code to override a court's reading of a statute; a constitutional amendment overrides the Court itself; an agency rule is bounded by its statute. See the landmark cases →
How the Constitution establishes — and enforces — the authority of every other law
The Constitution is not just the first law in time; it is the law that grants and limits all the others. Every power that any government official in the United States exercises has to trace back to a grant somewhere in this document, and no law of any kind is valid where it collides with it. That is what makes it foundational rather than merely first: the three kinds of law that people actually live under all draw their authority from it, and all answer to it.
Foundational law — the Constitution — comes first and sits above the rest. It creates the branches, hands each an enumerated set of powers, and expressly withholds others (the rights in the amendments are powers the government was never given). Nothing below it can enlarge those powers; every layer beneath is measured against it.
Statutory law — the acts of Congress and the state legislatures — is authoritative only insofar as it conforms to the Constitution. A statute is the command of the people's elected representatives and binds everyone once enacted, but its force is borrowed: Congress may legislate only within the powers Article I grants, and a statute that exceeds them, or that crosses a right the Constitution secures, is void. The same is true of the fourth layer, regulatory law — an agency rule is valid only within the authority its statute delegates, which in turn must be constitutional.
Case law and court rules — the work of the judiciary — interpret and apply the other layers, but always from within the constitutional frame. Courts do not make foundational law; they say what the Constitution and the statutes mean in a concrete dispute, and in doing so they are the branch that enforces the hierarchy against the other two.
Two clauses turn this from a diagram into an enforceable order. The Supremacy Clause of Article VI declares the Constitution, and the federal laws and treaties made under it, to be “the supreme Law of the Land… any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding” — binding the judges of every State to prefer the Constitution over any conflicting law. That settles which law wins. The enforcement mechanism — the power that actually gives a court the authority to refuse to apply an unconstitutional statute — was established in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), where Chief Justice Marshall held that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,” and that a legislative act repugnant to the Constitution is simply void. Judicial review is how the paper hierarchy becomes real: Supremacy names the winner, and judicial review is the courtroom power that enforces it. See the landmark cases that run this machinery →
What kind of document is a constitution? Charters, compacts, treaties, and the rest
People use “charter,” “compact,” “covenant,” and “constitution” loosely, and a lot of pseudolegal argument lives in that blur. They are genuinely different kinds of governing documents, and where the U.S. Constitution sits among them is exactly what makes it supreme. The distinctions below are real and historical.
A constitution is the document that constitutes — literally creates — a government, defines its branches, grants it limited powers, and stands above everything that government then makes. The U.S. Constitution is ordained by “We the People,” not granted by any higher authority, and it is enforced against the government by the courts. That self-originating, supreme character is what sets it apart from the others.
A charter is the opposite in direction: it is a grant of authority from a higher power down to a lesser one. The colonial charters (the Charter of Massachusetts Bay of 1629, the Royal Charter of Connecticut of 1662) were granted by the English Crown and could be altered or revoked by it. A corporate charter is a grant from the state that brings a company into legal existence; a municipal charter is a grant from a state legislature that lets a city govern locally. Authority under a charter flows downward and is held at the sufferance of the grantor — the reverse of a constitution, whose authority wells up from the people and binds the government it creates.
The Articles of Confederation (drafted 1777, ratified 1781) were America's first national frame — and a cautionary tale. They created only “a firm league of friendship” among states that each kept “its sovereignty, freedom and independence.” There was no real central power: Congress could not tax (only beg requisitions from the states), there was no national executive and no national judiciary, and amending the Articles required the unanimous consent of all thirteen states. The result was paralysis — unpaid war debts, trade wars between states, and unrest like Shays' Rebellion — which drove the 1787 Convention to scrap the Articles and write a constitution with a genuine, if limited and checked, central government. The contrast is the whole lesson: a league of sovereign states with no power over individuals could not function; a constitution that acts directly on people, within enumerated limits, could.
A compact or covenant is a mutual agreement among parties to bind themselves together. The Mayflower Compact (1620) is the classic example: the Plymouth colonists agreed to “covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick” and to obey the laws they would jointly make. That agreement-among-equals character is also where “compact theory” comes from — the argument that the Constitution is merely a compact among sovereign states, so a state may judge breaches for itself, nullify federal law, or secede. American law rejected that reading: the Union is not a dissolvable compact but, as Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), put it, “an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.” Sovereign-citizen material often misinvokes the Mayflower Compact or “compact theory” as a personal opt-out — see Rights That Hold Up in Court for why that fails.
A treaty is an agreement between sovereign nations. Under Article VI a ratified treaty becomes part of the “supreme Law of the Land” — but it sits on the same tier as a federal statute (the later-in-time one prevails) and it can never override the Constitution itself. How a treaty is made, and when a court will actually enforce one, is its own subject: see the treaties page →.
Bylaws and statutes are subordinate rules made under a charter or a constitution — a corporation's bylaws enacted under its charter, or Congress's statutes enacted under the Constitution. They are law, and they bind, but only within, and never above, the instrument that authorizes them.
The through-line: a constitution is the document that creates a government and is supreme over what that government makes — different in kind from a charter (authority granted from above, revocable by the grantor) and from a compact (authority agreed among parties). The U.S. Constitution gets called all of these at one time or another, but it is specifically a constitution: self-ordained by the people, creating a government of limited and enumerated powers, and standing over the statutory and case law that government then produces.
Read the Constitution (official sources)
The structure: three branches, three Articles
Here is the operator's point made literal: the Constitution is Foundational Law, and one of the things it founds is the other kinds of law. Article I creates Congress — the body whose acts are Statutory Law. Article III creates the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary — the courts whose decisions are Case Law & Rules. Article II creates the Executive that enforces the law and, through its agencies, issues Regulatory Law. And Articles IV–VII bind the States, provide the amendment power, and — through the Supremacy Clause and the judicial review recognized in Marbury v. Madison — make the whole hierarchy enforceable. So Congress and the courts do not stand on their own authority: the Constitution creates the bodies that make Statutory Law and Case Law, and binds them to itself.
Article I — Legislative (Congress): the source of Statutory Law
Creates the House and Senate and grants their powers — tax and spend, borrow, regulate interstate commerce (the Commerce Clause), coin money, declare war, and make all laws “necessary and proper.” Limits Congress (no bills of attainder, no ex post facto laws) and sets how a bill becomes law: passed by both houses and presented to the President. This is where Statutory Law comes from.
Article II — Executive (the President)
Vests executive power: faithfully execute the laws, command the armed forces, make treaties (Senate advice and consent) and appoint officers/judges, and veto legislation. The agencies that issue Regulatory Law sit here — acting only within the authority a statute delegates.
Article III — Judicial (the courts)
Establishes the Supreme Court and lower federal courts and extends judicial power to “cases and controversies.” The branch that decides what the other layers mean and whether they are constitutional — the source of Case Law.
Article IV — the States and the federal system
Binds the States into one country: each must give full faith and credit to the others' laws and judgments; a citizen carries the privileges and immunities of citizenship into every State; a fugitive from justice is subject to extradition; Congress admits new States and governs the territories; and the United States guarantees every State a republican form of government and protection against invasion.
Article V — how the Constitution is amended
The only lawful way to change the text. An amendment is proposed either by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or by a convention called by two-thirds of the States, and ratified by three-fourths of the States (through their legislatures or ratifying conventions). This is the one route that can override the Supreme Court's reading of the Constitution itself. The single entrenched limit today: no State may be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent.
Article VI — the Supremacy Clause
Declares the Constitution, the laws made under it, and treaties to be the “supreme Law of the Land” — binding on the judges of every State, over any conflicting state law. It also honors the nation's pre-existing debts and requires officials to swear to support the Constitution, while forbidding any religious test for public office.
Article VII — ratification
Set the terms by which the Constitution took effect: ratification by the conventions of nine States would establish it among the ratifying States. The ninth (New Hampshire) ratified in June 1788, and the new government began the following year.
The Bill of Rights — Amendments I–X
The first ten amendments were proposed by the First Congress in 1789 and ratified on December 15, 1791. Drafted largely by James Madison, they answer the Anti-Federalist demand for a written guarantee of individual liberties. They originally bound only the federal government (Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833)); most have since been 'incorporated' against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
First Amendment — religion, speech, press, assembly, petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The core guarantee of free expression and conscience: government may neither establish nor forbid a religion, and it may not punish speech, the press, peaceful assembly, or petitions to government simply for their content. Its protections are broad but not absolute — narrow categories such as incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, and defamation fall outside them.
Second Amendment — the right to keep and bear arms
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Protects an individual right to possess firearms, which the government may still regulate. Its scope — what weapons, what carrying, what restrictions survive — is among the most actively litigated questions in constitutional law.
Third Amendment — no quartering of soldiers
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Bars the government from housing troops in private homes without the owner's consent in peacetime. A response to the pre-Revolution Quartering Acts, it is the least-litigated amendment — but it stands as an early textual root of the idea that the home is constitutionally protected private space.
Fourth Amendment — searches and seizures
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Requires that searches and seizures be reasonable and that warrants be based on probable cause and describe specifically what may be searched or seized. The main remedy for a violation is the exclusionary rule — evidence gathered unlawfully is generally kept out of court.
Fifth Amendment — grand jury, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, due process, takings
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Bundles several protections: indictment by grand jury for serious federal crimes, no being tried twice for the same offense, no being forced to testify against oneself, a guarantee of due process of law, and a requirement that the government pay just compensation when it takes private property.
Sixth Amendment — fair criminal trial
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Sets the terms of a fair criminal trial: it must be speedy and public, before an impartial local jury; the accused must be told the charges, may confront the witnesses against him, may compel favorable witnesses to appear, and has the right to a lawyer.
Seventh Amendment — civil jury trial
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Preserves the right to a jury in federal civil cases that are analogous to the common-law suits that would have carried a jury in 1791, and forbids re-examining a jury's factual findings except as the common law allowed. It has not been incorporated against the States.
Eighth Amendment — bail, fines, and punishment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Limits what the government may do to punish: no excessive bail, no excessive fines, and no cruel and unusual punishments. It governs both the kinds of penalties allowed and the conditions of confinement.
Ninth Amendment — rights retained by the people
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Listing some rights in the Constitution does not mean those are the only rights the people have — the enumeration is not a ceiling.
The amendment answers an objection James Madison named when he introduced the Bill of Rights on June 8, 1789: that "by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure." Madison called this "one of the most plausible arguments" ever urged against having a bill of rights at all, and said it "may be guarded against" — the clause he wrote to do so became the Ninth Amendment.
The central question about the Ninth Amendment is what it actually does. Two readings compete. The first treats it as a font of unenumerated rights — an independent, judicially enforceable source of substantive liberties the Constitution never names. The second, and dominant, reading treats it as a rule of construction: a canon of interpretation that instructs courts not to infer, from the fact that some rights were written down, that the unwritten ones were surrendered. On the rule-of-construction view the Amendment settles an interpretive dispute (it answers the Federalist objection that any bill of rights would be read as an exhaustive list and would thereby shrink liberty to only what was named) but it does not by itself create or locate any particular right. The Supreme Court has never squarely rested a holding on the Ninth Amendment as a stand-alone source of rights, and the prevailing academic and judicial view is the rule-of-construction one. A minority scholarly position disagrees: Randy Barnett's 'presumption of liberty' reads the Amendment as substantive, arguing that it directs government to justify restrictions on unenumerated liberty rather than requiring individuals to prove a right exists. That substantive reading remains a minority position and has not been adopted by the Court.
Because the Amendment's text does not name the rights it protects, the doctrine of unenumerated rights grew up around it and beside it rather than out of it. The landmark is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which struck down a Connecticut ban on the use of contraceptives by married couples. Justice Douglas's majority opinion found a right of marital privacy not in any single clause but in what he called the 'penumbras, formed by emanations' of several guarantees taken together — the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments. A 'penumbra,' borrowed from astronomy and optics, is the partial shadow at the edge of a fully shadowed core; Douglas used it to mean the zone of implied protection that surrounds an expressly stated right. 'Emanations' are the things that radiate out from the enumerated guarantees — the peripheral rights without which the named right could not be secure. The Third Amendment's bar on quartering soldiers, the Fourth's protection of the home, the Fifth's self-incrimination privilege each imply a protected private sphere; read together, Douglas held, they create a constitutional right of privacy into which marital intimacy falls.
Justice Goldberg's concurrence in Griswold (joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Brennan) rested more directly on the Ninth Amendment. Goldberg argued that the Amendment shows the Framers believed there are fundamental rights beyond those specifically enumerated, and that the language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal the belief that other, unnamed liberties (marital privacy among them) are protected against governmental infringement. Goldberg's concurrence is the high-water mark of the Ninth Amendment as textual support for unenumerated rights, and it is why the Amendment is so often cited in this area — even though the Court's later doctrine did not take his route.
The route the Court actually settled on was substantive due process — the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee that no State shall deprive a person of 'liberty' without 'due process of law' protects certain substantive liberties, not just fair procedures. The intellectual anchor of the modern version is not a majority opinion at all but a dissent: Justice Harlan's dissent in Poe v. Ullman (1961). Poe dismissed an earlier challenge to the same Connecticut contraception statute on justiciability grounds, but Harlan wrote separately to argue that the statute violated the Due Process Clause. He described 'liberty' as a rational continuum that includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, and he located its content in the balance this Nation has struck between liberty and the demands of organized society, as a living tradition. Harlan's method — reasoning from tradition rather than from a fixed list of clauses — became the framework the Court adopted, and Griswold four years later vindicated his position.
From Griswold forward, unenumerated-rights cases were argued and decided primarily on substantive due process, with the Ninth Amendment cited as reinforcement rather than as the operative clause. The line runs back before Griswold to Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), which protected the liberty of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children. It runs forward through Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which extended the contraception right to unmarried people on equal-protection grounds and reframed privacy as an individual rather than a couple's right; Roe v. Wade (1973), which located a right to choose abortion within the same privacy tradition; Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which reaffirmed Roe's core while replacing its trimester framework with the 'undue burden' standard and grounding the right in a broadly stated conception of Fourteenth Amendment liberty; Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which struck down laws criminalizing consensual same-sex intimacy and expressly drew on Harlan's Poe dissent; Troxel v. Granville (2000), which reaffirmed the parental-rights strand of Meyer and Pierce; and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which held that the right to marry extends to same-sex couples under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Across these cases the analysis evolved from Douglas's clause-bundling penumbra approach toward Harlan's tradition-based liberty analysis.
How broadly to read that liberty has been the recurring fault line. In Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) the Court, rejecting a claimed right to physician-assisted suicide, articulated a deliberately narrow test: substantive due process protects only those fundamental rights and liberties that are, objectively, 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' and 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,' and the asserted right must be stated with a 'careful description.' The Glucksberg test disciplines the recognition of new unenumerated rights by tying them to historical practice, and it stands in tension with the more open-ended liberty reasoning of Casey and Obergefell.
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) the Court adopted the Glucksberg framework as the governing test for unenumerated substantive-due-process rights, held that abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition, and on that basis overruled Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The majority did not rest on the Ninth Amendment and did not treat it as an independent source of the right; it reasoned entirely within the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The majority stated that its holding concerned abortion alone and cast no doubt on precedents like Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, while a concurrence urged reconsidering those cases and the dissent warned that the same 'deeply rooted' reasoning could reach them. The scope of Dobbs for the rest of the unenumerated-rights line therefore remains contested.
Tenth Amendment — powers reserved to the States and the people
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Confirms that the federal government has only the powers the Constitution grants it; everything else stays with the States or the people. It is the textual anchor of federalism and of the anticommandeering principle.
Amendment text is the verbatim public-domain text of the Constitution (National Archives engrossed transcript). Each case row states what a decision is cited for as a matter of public record — not our verdict on whether it is rightly decided or currently good law.
The later amendments
After the Bill of Rights, seventeen more amendments have been ratified. The Reconstruction Amendments (13, 14, 15) remade the constitutional order after the Civil War; later amendments expanded the vote, changed how the government is elected and succeeds itself, and enabled the modern income tax. A representative selection follows, with text (verbatim where short) and what each did.
Thirteenth Amendment — abolition of slavery ratified 1865
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
What it did: Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States (with a narrow exception for punishment of a duly convicted crime). Unlike most of the Constitution, it binds private persons, not just government, and empowers Congress to legislate against slavery and its 'badges and incidents.'
Fourteenth Amendment — citizenship, due process, equal protection ratified 1868
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 1 and Section 5 are quoted verbatim. Section 2 (apportionment of representatives, with a penalty for denying the vote), Section 3 (barring insurrectionists who had sworn to support the Constitution from office, subject to a two-thirds congressional waiver), and Section 4 (validity of the public debt; repudiation of Confederate debts) are summarized here.
What it did: The most consequential amendment after the Bill of Rights. Its Citizenship Clause overruled Dred Scott and made everyone born in the country a citizen; its Due Process Clause is the vehicle that 'incorporated' most of the Bill of Rights against the States; and its Equal Protection Clause is the foundation of modern anti-discrimination law.
Fifteenth Amendment — the vote regardless of race ratified 1870
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
What it did: Barred denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and gave Congress power to enforce it — the basis for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Sixteenth Amendment — the federal income tax ratified 1913
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
What it did: Let Congress tax incomes without apportioning the tax among the States by population — the constitutional basis of the modern income tax. It was adopted specifically to override the Supreme Court's contrary decision in Pollock.
Seventeenth Amendment — direct election of Senators ratified 1913
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.
Section 1 quoted; the amendment's further provisions on voter qualifications and on filling vacancies (by gubernatorial appointment pending an election, if the legislature so directs) are summarized.
What it did: Changed how Senators are chosen: from selection by state legislatures (the original Article I design) to direct election by the people of each State.
Nineteenth Amendment — women's suffrage ratified 1920
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
What it did: Guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied on account of sex — the culmination of the decades-long women's suffrage movement.
Twenty-second Amendment — presidential term limits ratified 1951
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
Section 1's operative sentence is quoted; the amendment also included a grandfather clause for the president in office when it was proposed and a seven-year ratification deadline.
What it did: Wrote the two-term limit into the Constitution, making permanent the tradition George Washington began and Franklin D. Roosevelt broke by winning four elections.
Twenty-fourth Amendment — abolition of the poll tax ratified 1964
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
What it did: Banned poll taxes as a condition of voting in federal elections — one of the tools long used to keep poor and Black citizens from the polls.
Twenty-fifth Amendment — presidential succession and disability ratified 1967
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Sections 1 and 2 are quoted verbatim. Section 3 (the President's own written declaration of inability, transferring power to the Vice President as Acting President until the President declares recovery) and Section 4 (the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet declaring the President unable, with a congressional dispute-resolution procedure) are summarized.
What it did: Filled gaps the original Constitution left in presidential succession: it confirms the Vice President becomes President on a vacancy, provides for filling a vacant vice presidency, and sets out orderly procedures for handling a President's inability to serve.
Twenty-sixth Amendment — the vote at eighteen ratified 1971
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
What it did: Lowered the voting age to eighteen nationwide. Ratified faster than any other amendment, it answered the Vietnam-era argument that those old enough to be drafted were old enough to vote — and resolved the split the Court had created in Oregon v. Mitchell.
Verbatim where quoted; summarized sections are labeled. The full text of every article and amendment is at the Constitution Annotated and the National Archives.
Checks and balances — the landmark cases
Each row states the case, its citation, and what the Court held, as a matter of record — no judgment on whether it is rightly decided or currently good law. Click through to the court's own words.
Courts over statutes: judicial review
Courts over the executive
Congress vs. the executive: bicameralism & presentment
The executive bounded by statute: agency deference
The other direction: overriding the Court
Checks run up too. When the Court reads a statute a way Congress dislikes, Congress can amend it (e.g. the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act overrode Ledbetter v. Goodyear, 550 U.S. 618 (2007)). When the Court reads the Constitution, only an Article V amendment can override it (the 11th overrode Chisholm v. Georgia; the 16th overrode Pollock; the 14th overrode Dred Scott).
Case descriptions state what each decision is cited for as a matter of legal-historical record, from the public reporters — not our verdict on whether a case is correct or currently good law. Corrections route to the source of record (see the footer).
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