The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. The first three Articles of the Constitution establish the three branches of the federal government with checks and balances to support a separation of powers: a legislature, the bicameral Congress; an executive branch led by the President; and a federal judiciary headed by the Supreme Court. The last four Articles frame the principle of federalism. The Tenth Amendment confirms its federal characteristics.
The Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ratified by conventions in eleven states. The first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times and its principles are applied in courts of law by judicial review.
The Constitution guides American society in law andpolitical culture. It is the oldest charter of supreme law in continuous use, and It influenced later international figures establishing national constitutions.
In drafting the constitution, the delegates understood power to be corrupting and humans to be subject to their worst instincts.
the delegates consulted
the wisdom of the ages,
sifting through the contemporary
political tracts of their own day,
as well as the histories
of ancient civilizations.
They understood power
to be corrupting
and humans to be subject to
their worst instincts.
The debates inside the meeting room were heated and contentious. The delegates examined every phrase of the constitution through the prism of the conflicting interests they represented: large states and small states, states with commercially based economies versus states with slave-based agricultural economies. History, political theory, their own interests, and devotion to the American experiment, all informed their thinking, as they hammered out a practical scheme of government.
The Federal Convention convened in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Because the delegations from only two states were at first present, the members adjourned from day to day until a quorum of seven states was obtained on May 25. Through discussion and debate it became clear by mid-June that, rather than amend the existing Articles, the Convention would draft an entirely new frame of government. All through the summer, in closed sessions, the delegates debated, and redrafted the articles of the new Constitution. Among the chief points at issue were how much power to allow the central government, how many representatives in Congress to allow each state, and how these representatives should be elected--directly by the people or by the state legislators. The work of many minds, the Constitution stands as a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise.
Howard Chandler Christy's Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States