Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 [ 3 ] It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789.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 first ten amendments were adopted and ratified simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Six amendments adopted by Congress and sent to the states have not been ratified by the required number of states.
At the time of the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, and its ratification in 1789, slavery was banned by the states in New England and Pennsylvania and by the Congress of the Confederation in the Northwest Territory, by the Northwest Ordinance. Though slaves were present in other states, most were forced to work in agriculture in the South.
The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution . This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson ...
t. e. The Twenty-second Amendment ( Amendment XXII) to the United States Constitution limits the number of times a person can be elected to the office of President of the United States to two terms, and sets additional eligibility conditions for presidents who succeed to the unexpired terms of their predecessors. [ 1]
The Preamble's reference to the "United States of America" has been interpreted over the years to explain the nature of the governmental entity that the Constitution created (i.e., the federal government). In contemporary international law, the world consists of sovereign states (or "sovereign nations" in modern equivalent).
The federal government of the United States ( U.S. federal government or U.S. government) [ a] is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, five major self-governing territories, several island possessions, and the federal district /national capital of Washington ...
The Seventh Amendment ( Amendment VII) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. This amendment codifies the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases and inhibits courts from overturning a jury's findings of fact . An early version of the Seventh Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison, along ...