4th Amendment

The U.S. Constitution

Article Five, clause two of the United States Constitution

states, "under the Authority of the United States, [the Constitution]

shall be the supreme law of the land." As a result of the fact that

the current activist government is pursuing inconsistent policies,

many believe the Constitution has become irrelevant because no guiding

principles seem to exist. Thomas Jefferson once said, "The

Constitution belongs to the living and not to the dead." Accordingly,

it is often referred to as a "living" document because of its regular

alteration and reexamination; therefore, the Constitution has not

become irrelevant in defining the goals of American government. This

will be shown by examining how the Constitution ensures and upholds

American ideas of rights, defines governmental structures, allows for

an increase in governmental growth, and permits the Supreme Court to

shape and define public policy through Constitutional

interpretation.

Through years of research on court cases, political scientists

are in agreement that most people favor rights in theory, but their

support diminishes when the time to put the rights into practice

arrives. For example, a strong percentage of Americans concur with

the idea of free speech throughout the United States, but when a court

case such as Texas vs. Johnson (1989) arises, most backing shifts away

from complete freedom of speech. In the case, a Texan named Gregory

Johnson set fire to an American flag during the 1984 Republican

National Convention in Dallas in order to protest nuclear arms

buildup; the decision was awarded to Johnson in the midst of stern

opposition (Beth 68).

Lockean philosophy concerning the natural rights of man also

serves amajor role in an American's idea of rights. Many citizens

feels that it is the task of the state to preserve such birthrights as

life, liberty, and property. The juristic theory of rights deals with

the hypothesis that a man's natural rights only amounted to the

quantity of power he can exercise over any other man. A more general

and logical definition of a right is a claim upheld by the law, in

which case the Bill of Rights becomes important (Benn 195).

Although the Constitution originally did not contain the Bill

of Rights, the states threatened to delay ratification until the

amendments were made. The main purpose of implementing the first ten

amendments to the United States Constitution, was to safeguard

fundamental individual rights against seizure by the federal

government and prohibit interference with existing rights. The

Revolutionary War with Britain was still quite clear in the American

mind during the writing of the Constitution, so the Bill of Rights had

full support of the public because it protected citizens against

everything which had angered the colonists about the British (Holder

52).

The Constitution is extremely ambiguous concerning individual

rights and personal freedoms of man. It does, however, prohibit the

passage of ex post facto laws, which punish people for an act they

committed before such an act was illegal, disallow bills of attainder,

which punish offenders without a trial, and prevent suspension of the

writ of habeas corpus, which requires a detained man to be notified of

the offense he committed (Gilbert 331). The Constitution also

prohibits religious qualifications for seeking and holding a

governmental office, and it secures the right of a trial by jury of

peers in a criminal case (Gilbert 336).

Articles One, Two, and Three of the United States Constitution

define the three structures of the national government, and include

each branch's composition and function.

Article One deals with the Congress, the legislative structure

of the federal government. It is the Congress, rather than the

President, who is bestowed by the Constitution with the lawmaking

duty. The legislative branch contains two Houses, one being the

Senate, which is based upon equal representation of the states, and

the other being the House of Representatives, which is based upon

state population. The Framers envisioned Congress as the most

important and most powerful branch of government, although today much

of the significant legislation is initiated by the President and the

executive