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Articles 5, 6, and 7

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During the Constitutional Convention, delegates from around the new United States of America came together to formulate a strong nation to replace the weak confederacy that emerged after the Revolutionary War. Article Five of said Constitution was written to give the country the ability to change as the world around it changed. Article Six was created to hold up the financial reputation of America by transferring debts, as well as sustain the standards set in earlier articles as the supreme law of the United States. Article Seven was created to streamline the process of ratifying the Constitution. 

Article Five spells out the process that the federal government has to go through in order to amend the Constitution. Either Congress can present an amendment by gathering two-thirds of both the House and the Senate to approve the amendment, or if the legislatures of two-thirds of the states come together to propose an amendment, Congress will call a convention and amendments will be proposed. Following this, three-fourths of state legislators must ratify the amendment. Congress could also decide to have the states call a convention purely to ratify an amendment. A final clause was tacked on to the end of this amendment stating that no amendment could be passed inhibiting the slave trade until 1808. Article Six transfers the debt and prior treaties from the national government under the Articles of Confederation to the new Constitution. It also states that the federal government (and therefore the Constitution) is the supreme authority in America. Finally, it specifies that oaths should be made by legislators and executives to the people of the United States instead of a religious test as a barrier to entry. Article Seven of the Constitution states that only nine states are required to ratify the Constitution for it to be the binding federal document, and it lists all 13 states and the order in which they will call a Convention to vote on the validity of the Constitution. 

An example of a complex ratification process is the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), an amendment to codify the equality of the sexes in law, was ratified by 30 states within the first year of its proposal but it met opposition after this 30-state benchmark over concerns that women would no longer be exempt from compulsory military service as well as other issues. There are other cases of discrepancy between federal and state power like some campaign finance laws and the legalization of marijuana in spite of the Controlled Substances Act.

During the initial creation of the country, the goal was as little central regulation as possible, but this turned out to be a weak way to organize the United States as many consequential regulations changed from state to state. The Constitution’s significance comes from the combination of general principles found in state Constitutions and rolled them into one document that set the federal government as the highest rule of law in the United States. Instead of changing the federal supremacy clause, the Constitution should clarify the Elasticity Clause or refine the Tenth Amendment to clarify specifically how elastic the powers of the federal government is or where state jurisdiction starts. 

Bibliography

Congress, The Federal Status of Marijuana and the Expanding Policy Gap with States, H.R. Doc., at 3 (Mar. 6, 2023). Accessed June 2, 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12270.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Equal Rights Amendment.” Britannica. Last modified April 27, 2023. Accessed June 2, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Equal-Rights-Amendment.

Oyez. “Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee V. Federal Election Commission.” In Oyez. Last modified 2023. Accessed June 2, 2023. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1995/95-489.

Oriana – The 7th Amendment

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When being ruled by Britain, the colonists had no say in the British Parliament, meaning that they had no control in how they were governed, or what taxes were levied on them. So when the colonies introduced the idea of independence from Britain, colonial juries were a way for the colonies to start governing themselves. And in 1776, when the colonies finally gained their independence, the right to civil jury was included in many state laws.

However, when the Constitutional Convention met in 1787, there were mixed feelings about civil juries. The Federalists felt that including a civil jury in the constitution would lead to the nullification of laws, while Anti-Federalists believed that the lack of this law would prevent citizens from being protected from governmental abuses. Ultimately the 7th amendment was drafted into the Bill of Rights. The 7th Amendment is commonly interpreted as: The right to a jury trial in civil cases, when the case dispute exceeds 20 dollars. No judge can overturn the jury’s verdict. In the 7th Amendment, the term “common law” is used twice.

This term confused many as it was unclear what common law the writers of the Constitution were referring to. America was a young nation, and it did not yet have a common law to base this Amendment on. In the Supreme Court case United States v. Wonson, it was determined that the common law that the amendment referred to was actually the common law of England. This statement was refined in Dimick v. Schiedt (1935), which declared that the 7th amendment was to be interpreted in terms of English common law as it was in 1791. The meaning of this term was clearly defined. However, the Supreme Court ruled in the Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman (1935) case, the “substance of the common law right of trial by jury” is different in its actual application to every civil case. This means that the right to trial by jury is guaranteed, but certain civil cases can be handled with modifications to the jury, including a decreased size, or the lack of.

I agree with this ruling because there are, especially in the 21st century, many aspects that can go into each case, making them unique from each other. And in some of these cases, juries aren’t required, or would benefit without a jury. Every aspect of this amendment has been clearly defined, except the twenty dollar amount required for a civil case to be tried by a jury. This is because the impact of this dollar amount has changed over the centuries. While twenty dollars may have been a handsome amount of money in 1791, the value has decreased, not accurately representing the amount required for modern day civil cases. And may very well be the case in the future, where the price again becomes irrelevant. It’s best to remove this clause entirely.

Greyson Ward Articles 6 and 7

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Looking back at the Articles of Confederation, the framers of the Constitution created the Sixth and Seventh Articles in order to address the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, which allowed the states too much power, and to ensure the Constitution was passed by a supermajority. The 6th Article declares that all debt the states had accumulated would be transferred to the new federal government. The second clause of the Sixth Article creates a hierarchy of law in the United States with the Constitution being at the top followed by federal, state, and municipal laws.

All the laws proclaimed by the Constitution and federal government, including treaties, must be upheld by federal and state judges. The final clause illuminates how all government officials are duty bound to follow the Constitution and that officials are free to practice any religion. The 7th Article declares that consent from the convention of the nine states is necessary to pass the Constitution. The Constitution can be ratified if there is a vote where nine out of thirteen states approved the new Constitution. Mark Graber in “Why Nine Meant Thirteen” highlights his view of the Seventh Article, which was that it was made to prevent the blockage of acceptance votes by only one or two states seeking more favorable terms. On the other hand, Michael B. Rappaport states in the article, “Desirability of the Constitution,” that Article Seven was passed because

it was important to get a supermajority of the population behind the Constitution. He illuminates how the protection of states’ rights and the Bill of Rights was included in the Constitution because it reflected the factions in the supermajority, not just the majority. Rappaport’s argument was aligned with the framers, who had been influenced by John Locke’s concept of the protection of the inalienable rights along with Rousseau’s social contract, who wanted the supermajority because it was important that the new Constitution expressed the will of the people.

The Seventh Article was designed in a way that put pressure on states to ratify quickly, as the longer states held out, the less influence the state would have on the forming of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A case that challenged the Seventh Article was McCulloch vs Maryland, which was a feud over whether Maryland, a state, could tax a federal bank.

The outcome of the case was that the federal government held more power than a state government, resulting in a ruling supporting the view of McCulloch that a national bank is not required to pay a state tax. The case illustrates that the law of the Constitution, ratified by the states, stands atop the power pyramid of the United States, which demonstrates the enlightenment thinker’s view of the protection of the inalienable rights gained from the social contract, the United States Constitution.

A way to update this article would be to allow a state convention to repeal their vote for the ratification of the Constitution. Fortunately, the ratification process does not allow for this, as a repeal of their ratification vote would undermine the Constitution and destroy the rights Americans hold dear to their hearts. 

Articles 5, 6, and 7

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Article V covers the legal process of Amending the Constitution. It was drafted in response to the hesitation of certain states to ratify the Constitution. When an amendment is proposed, ⅔ of both houses, the Senate, and the House of Representatives need to agree to an amendment to move to the next step. The amendment then goes to state legislatures and ¾ of all legislatures must ratify it within 7 years or it will lapse. Scholars disagree about whether a state can revoke their vote in favor of an amendment. Some scholars feel that states should not be allowed to take away their vote for an amendment as that power is not explicitly stated in Article V.

Opposing scholars do not see an issue as long as the state makes its decision within the 7 year limit. Article VI of the Constitution covers debts and supreme law. It states that all debts from the previous government under the Articles of Confederation are still valid under the new Constitution, and that all members of the three branches of the new government must take an oath of allegiance to the new Constitution. As a new nation, allyship and allegiance were important and this oath ensured that the government would stand with one another as a nation under the new Constitution.

This Article also states that federal law is more powerful than state law, and when in conflict federal law becomes the, “the supreme Law of the Land”. In McCulloch vs. Maryland (1819), the state of Maryland wanted to impose taxes on the Second Bank of the United States but the cashier of the Baltimore branch refused to pay. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that because the bank was a federally created and controlled institution, the state did not have the right to tax it. This is a clear example of the national supremacy clause, in a conflict of power between state and federal rights, the federal government has more power. Article VII covers the process of the ratification of the Constitution.

It states that in order to ratify the Constitution, 9 out of 13 states must agree to it. This article is a response to the Articles of Confederation which stated that all states were required for ratification. This provision created conflict between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Anti-Federalists pointed out that the new constitution was not supreme law yet, as it had not been ratified and therefore the process in the Articles of Confederation still stood. Federalists argued that because there had been so many violations of the Articles of Confederation they no longer stood as supreme law and that Article VII was now the guiding principle for constitutional ratification. Through the conflict and disagreement that these Articles faced, they prevailed by reshaping the Constitution to what it is today.