Category: Constitution Series

Tennessee Will Host The National Constitution Bee, Grand Champion Set to Win $25,000 Education Scholarship

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The Star News Education Foundation announced Wednesday the first ever National Constitution Bee competition will take place on Saturday, October 24 in Brentwood, Tennessee, where the Grand Champion will be awarded an unprecedented education scholarship of $25,000.

In addition to the announcement, organizers have launched a new website, GuidetotheConstitution.org, where Bee contestants may review the new podcast series of the groundbreaking book, The Guide to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for Secondary Students.

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Gregory Watson Commentary: Woodrow Wilson Began the Modern Tradition of Personally Delivering the SOTU Address to Congress in Order to Sell His Progressive Agenda to the Country

Gregory Watson

Among the many duties of the President of the United States is one that is found in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient….” The Constitution does not specify in what manner the President is expected to furnish such “information” nor does it even suggest any certain season of the year — or any particular interval of time — that such “information” be provided. And, if conveyed verbally, the Constitution is silent as to from what physical location the President should perform this function. Commonly referred to as the “State-of-the-Union” address, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dubbed it in 1934, President George Washington, the first man to occupy the high office of President of the United States, delivered the initial such regular, annual message before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1790. President Thomas Jefferson, our country’s third President, decided it better instead to send his remarks in written form to then be read to the membership by high-ranking Congressional employees. Jefferson’s idea held for more…

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Commentary: The U.S. Constitution Allows For The Appointment Of Temporarily ‘Acting’ Officials Without Senate Confirmation

Gregory Watson

In its Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, the United States Constitution provides that the President of the United States: …by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States whose Appointments are not otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law…” This means that, by a simple majority vote of the 100-member U.S. Senate, the President may nominate — and the Senate may confirm — various appointees within the Executive branch and within the Judicial branch of the federal government. In the aftermath of the November 6, 2018, general election — and the Republican Party enjoying a net gain of three seats in the U.S. Senate — President Donald Trump should experience less difficulty, during the upcoming 116th Congress (2019-2020), with how his nominees are received in the nation’s highest legislative body, than had been the case during the 115th Congress. But not every appointment requires action by the U.S. Senate — regardless of whether that body is officially in session or is in recess between sessions. The Constitution’s Article II, Section 2, Clause 3, reads…

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Commentary: What The U.S. Constitution Really Says On The Subject Of Impeachment And Trial Removal Of The President

Gregory Watson

Before then-President-elect Donald Trump could even take the official oath of office on January 20, 2017, his critics were already chattering about the possibility of Trump’s tenure in the White House being truncated by means of involuntary removal. Throughout 2017 and 2018, there has been, and continues to be, spirited discussion by the President’s detractors of the possibility of expelling him from office by means of the impeachment-and-trial process that is found in separate parts of the U.S. Constitution. One of the most ardent advocates of ousting President Trump has been U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-California). Another has been her colleague, U.S. Representative Al Green (D-Texas) who actually went so far as to offer articles of impeachment against the President only to be soundly rebuffed, as recently as January 19, 2018, by a procedural motion-to-table Green’s House Resolution No. 705 with 355 yeas, 66 nays, 3 “present”, and 6 “not voting”. Prior to the recent November 6, 2018, general election, some members of the U.S. House of Representatives vowed that, if the partisan composition of that body would flip from majority Republican to majority Democrat — which it certainly did on November 6th — efforts to impeach the President would…

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Registration Is Open for the 2020 Tennessee Star Constitution Bee, Which Will Be Held on April 25

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Constitution Bee April, 2018

  The 2020 Tennessee Star Constitution Bee is open for registration!   If you have a secondary school-level student enrolled in a public or private school, or an accredited home school program, they are eligible to participate in the 2020 Tennessee Star Constitution Bee, a one-day event to be held Saturday, April 25, 2020 at Metro Christian Academy in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The top three finishers will earn college scholarships of $3,000, $1,000, and $500 respectively. In addition, they will win a free trip to Washington, D.C. for themselves and a parent to participate in the inaugural 2020 National Constitution Bee, where the winner will earn a $25,000 college scholarship! The questions in the 2020 Tennessee Star Constitution Bee will be based on the 2019 edition of The Star News Digital Media Guide to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for Secondary School Students, which is now available for purchase at a price of $30 here. The guide is written at the level for 11th and 12th grade students who are taking the half semester course in Government, but can also be used as a self-study guide by any student in grades 8 through 12. Students in grades 8 through 12 are eligible to participate. The questions and…

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Commentary: The Migrant ‘Caravan’ Marching Northbound To Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas, and What The U.S. Constitution Has To Say About It

Gregory Watson

The United States Constitution does contain a few references relative to immigration and naturalization as well as to persons seeking to enter the United States in contravention of its laws — whether violently or non-violently and whether singly or in the form of a human tsunami. In its Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, the Constitution specifically grants Congress the power “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization….” By expressly allocating this capacity to Congress, the Constitution seeks to prevent the confusion which would inevitably result if an individual state could itself bestow U.S. citizenship upon a person not born within the boundaries of that — or any other — state. Construing Clause 4, the United States Supreme Court, in the 1892 case of Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, defined “naturalization” as “…the act of adopting a foreigner, and clothing him with the privileges of a native [U.S.] citizen.” In Clause 11 of that same Article I, Section 8, the Constitution authorizes Congress “To declare War…and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water….” Interpreting Clause 11, the High Court ruled in the 1795 case of Penhallow v. Doane that the war power of the United States government is…

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What The United States Constitution Really Says About ‘Birthright Citizenship’

Gregory Watson
Constitution Series 14th Amendment

In Section 1 of its 14th Amendment, the U.S. Constitution reads in pertinent part: “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.” Proposed by Congress in 1866 — and deemed by a procedurally-rare subsequent vote of Congress to have been validly ratified by the sufficient number of state legislatures in 1868 — the 14th Amendment is among the Constitution’s lengthiest and it touches upon a number of different topics each of which could stand alone. Authorship of the above-quoted words has been attributed to United States Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan. This particular provision of the 14th Amendment is generally acknowledged to overturn the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in which it had been determined that African-Americans born in the United States — to parents likewise born within the United States — could not be deemed to be American citizens. Often overlooked by persons professing to be in-the-know about the 14th Amendment, and what it does — or does not — convey about birth citizenship are the key words…

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U.S. Constitution Does Not Guarantee That You Can Always Pay With Cash

Gregory Watson

In its Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, the United States Constitution provides:  “The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, [and] regulate the Value thereof….” And since the Constitution’s drafting in the year 1787, cash has played a vital role in the nation’s economy as the generally-accepted medium of exchange.  Barter still exists, but on a relatively limited basis and, although there has been chatter for decades about America one day becoming a completely “cashless” society, that day has yet to arrive. In modern times, there are, of course, multiple methods of payment for goods and services as well as to pay down debt in installments — or to completely extinguish it in one fell swoop.  In addition to cash, there are checks, credit cards, electronic money transfers and other means of payment. Pursuant to the above-quoted provision from the U.S. Constitution, Congress enacted the Coinage Act of 1965 (last amended by two bills approved by the 97th Congress in Public Laws Nos. 97-258 and 97-452; the 1965 Act is the successor to the Coinage Act of 1792 as well as the Coinage Act of 1873).  The 1965 version includes Title 31 United States Code Subchapter 5103 which, from 1983…

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Commentary: The U.S. Constitution Narrowly Prevailed Over Mob Rule And Character-Assassination

Gregory Watson

On October 6, 2018, now-Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was formally confirmed by the U.S. Senate — in a rare Saturday session — with a slender vote of 50 yeas and 48 nays in the 100-member body. Both of Tennessee’s Senators, Republicans Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, cast their votes in favor of Kavanaugh joining the highest court in the land. The last time that someone gained membership onto the High Court by such a close margin was on May 12, 1881, when Thomas Stanley Matthews (nominated by President James Garfield) squeaked by with 24 yeas and 23 nays in the Senate.  Matthews went on to distinguish himself on the Court as a foe of racial discrimination when he wrote the Opinion in the 1886 case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, striking down the City of San Francisco’s then-policies of restricting the ability of Chinese immigrants in that city — and placing extraneous procedural obstacles in their path — to establish businesses there, thus infringing upon the federal Constitution’s 14th Amendment. A short time after this past Saturday’s 50-48 vote, Chief Justice John Roberts administered the official oath to Kavanaugh as the 114th Justice of the Supreme Court, thereby…

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Senator Susan Collins’ Historic Speech Lauding Constitutional Principles in Support of Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) delivered remarks from the Senate floor Friday afternoon to announce her decision to vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. On Saturday, Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the United States Senate by a 50 to 48 vote. Collins’s speech was the defining moment in the confirmation battle. It has been described by many conservatives and Republicans as one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the history of the Senate. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) delivers a heartfelt speech explaining her decision regarding Kavanuagh’s confirmation and the importance of this historical occasion to the Senate floor.   Her full remarks are as follows: Mr. President, the five previous times that I have come to the floor to explain my vote on the nomination of a justice to the United States Supreme Court, I have begun my floor remarks explaining my decision with a recognition of the solemn nature and the importance of the occasion. But today we have come to the conclusion of a confirmation process that has become so dysfunctional it looks more like a caricature of a gutter-level political campaign than a…

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The Would-Be ‘State of Franklin’ That Never Officially Existed

Gregory Watson

The United States Constitution does, of course, contain guidelines as to how a territory may enter the Union as a full-fledged state on an equal footing with all previously-existing states.  The last time that any new states were added to the United States was in the year 1959 when Alaska became the nation’s 49th state and Hawaii became the country’s 50th state. Specifically, the U.S. Constitution’s Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 — which requires only a simple majority vote — reads: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.” There has been recent chatter about admitting Puerto Rico into the Union as the nation’s 51st state. As the Constitution was not written until 1787 — and, once written, did not take effect until the following year — the procedure outlined within the still-in-force Articles of Confederation would have remained applicable to admission of news states up to…

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Tennessee State Lawmakers Gave Up a Section of the State Constitution When They Quickly Ratified The U.S. Constitution’s 26th Amendment

Gregory Watson

Back in 1971, the Tennessee General Assembly quickly ratified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which lowered the voting age in all elections–federal, state and local– to 18 in every state. By doing so, they voluntarily give up a section of the Tennessee State Constitution. Here’s that story: During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietnam War — with which the United States was heavily involved — continued to rage overseas.  With so many American soldiers — several of them younger than 20 years of age — dying on the battlefields of a foreign land in this War, public opinion within the United States began to shift in terms of by what age a person should become eligible to vote.  At the time, an individual had to be at least 21 years of age in order to register to vote. But with the evolution in social sentiment occasioned at least in part by the Vietnam War, Congress began to take steps to lower that age from 21 down to 18.  A popular slogan of the day was “if you are old enough to fight for your country, then you are old enough to cast a…

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Tennessee and The U.S. Constitution’s 15th Amendment

Gregory Watson
Celebrating the 15th Amendment

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted freed former male slaves and any adult male citizen the right to vote,  was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of all states and added to the Constitution in 1870.  At the time there were 37 states, and when the 28th state ratified the amendment in February, 1870, the three-fourths standard was met. Tennessee was not among those 28 states. In fact, Tennessee did not get around to ratifying the 15th Amendment until more than 100 years later, in 1997. Here is that story: During the Reconstruction period in the American South, in the aftermath of the Civil War, three individual amendments were incorporated into the U.S. Constitution – each separated in succession by only a few years – pursuant to that document’s Article V. This trifecta ended a dry spell of more than 60 years of no amendments at all finding their way into the federal Constitution. The 13th Amendment, ending slavery, was adopted in 1865.  The 14th Amendment, defining citizenship status, came along in 1868 (although there is some question as to whether its ratification process was 100 percent strictly by-the-book).  And the 15th Amendment, granting to former male slaves –…

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Commentary: 40 Years Of Congress Not Proposing Any Constitutional Amendments Does Not Mean That Changes To The Constitution Are Not Wanted

Gregory Watson

August 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the very last time that Congress proposed an amendment to the United States Constitution. It was on August 22, 1978, that the 95th Congress offered to the state legislatures for ratification a constitutional amendment that–had it been ratified by the required number of states within its 7-year deadline on August 22, 1985–would have granted to Washington, D.C. two United States Senators and however many members of the United States House of Representatives the District of Columbia’s population would have warranted. But the lack of action by Congress over the past four decades in proposing constitutional amendments certainly has not meant that there is no desire among Americans to change the federal Constitution. Gaining momentum during that same decade of the 1970s was a movement within the state legislatures to trigger the calling of an “Article V Convention” whereby state lawmakers may largely–but not entirely–bypass a recalcitrant Congress and push for a federal constitutional amendment that, perhaps, Congress might understandably prefer to suppress.  In this particular case, that would be an amendment requiring the federal budget to be in balance. Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides in pertinent part:  “The Congress…on the application…

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The Proposed 1972 Equal Rights Amendment And Its Still-Unfinished Checkered History with Tennessee State Lawmakers

Gregory Watson
Equal Rights Amendment protest

If you thought that the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution offered by the 92nd Congress to the state legislatures for ratification back in 1972 was just a distant memory–and a thing completely of the past–think again. Its cheerleaders during the 1970s endeavored to sell ERA as nothing more than guaranteeing equal legal rights for women and men. And, certainly, that had a nice ring to it. The U.S. Senate shouted its approval of ERA on March 22, 1972, with 84 yeas, 8 nays and 7 not voting. Previously, on October 21, 1971, the U.S. House of Representatives roared its blessing with 354 yeas, 24 nays and 51 not voting. And, with that, ERA was placed before the nation’s state legislatures for their consideration, pursuant to the well-established procedures found in the U.S. Constitution’s Article V. In tendering ERA to the states, the 92nd Congress had imposed a customary deadline of seven years–or until March 22, 1979–for America’s state lawmakers to fully ratify ERA in order for the measure to officially become part of the U.S. Constitution. With 50 states in the Union in 1972–and still 50 in it today–a proposed federal constitutional amendment must be…

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EXCLUSIVE: The 202 Year Ratification Saga of the 27th Amendment

Gregory Watson
Gregory Watson

Gregory Watson has been recognized by historians, academics, and elected officials as the only individual in American history whose singular efforts are responsible for the ratification of an amendment to the United States Constitution. Mr. Watson has provided this first hand account of his successful efforts to persuade state legislatures across the country to ratify the 27th amendment exclusively to The Tennessee Star.   For me, the journey of amending the United States Constitution in 1992 really started some 14 years earlier in 1978.  During that summer, my family moved over 1,000 miles from Michigan to Texas.  I was age 16 at the time and I still had the final two years of high school ahead of me to complete. While sharing a border with Dallas, the suburb of Mesquite, Texas, was not connected with Dallas’ public transit service.  Although of legal age to obtain a driver’s license, since I did not have access to a vehicle, I was unable to travel from Point A to Point B and had to seek other ways to achieve intellectual stimulation during those two years of residency in Mesquite.  After graduating from Mesquite High School in May of 1980, I relocated to Austin…

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Constitution Series: The Nineteenth Amendment

Claudia Henneberry
Susan B Anthony

    This is the twenty-second of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on Saturday, April 28.   The Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified and victoriously added to the United States Constitution on August 26, 1920 after nearly one hundred years of painstaking trials, tumult, and disappointment.  Twenty-six million women were enfranchised! It states: 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. To understand the long road to political equality for the American woman, we must understand the history and events that transpired during those years. HISTORY The U. S. Constitution of 1787 was a gender-neutral document.  The original Constitution referred to “persons,” not male persons, and used the pronoun “he” only in the generic sense.  Not until the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 did the Constitution include the word “male.”   In fact, nothing in the original document prevented women from voting.  Our founders left it to the discretion…

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Constitution Series: December 15, 1791: The Date Our American Republic Was Fully Formed

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

On December 15, 1791, the legislature of the state of Virginia ratified all ten amendments to the Constitution, making the Bill of Rights the law of the land, and completing our country’s founding document. It had been over a quarter of a century since the Declaration of Independence had been signed on July 4, 1776 by members of the Continental Congress. Now, after a bloody war and many fits and starts, the complete covenant that bound the now fourteen states into a new republic had been sealed. It had also been more than four years since Benjamin Franklin, stepping out of the final day of the Constitutional Convention, told Mrs. Powel the delegates had given the citizens of the fledgling United States, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” All four years had been necessary to fulfill the promise made to the Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and North Carolina during the ratification conventions in those states that in return for ratifying the Constitution, the first order of business in the new republic would be the passage of the Bill of Rights. Thanks largely to James Madison, and the integrity of all those leaders who sided with…

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Constitution Series: The Seventeenth Amendment and the Direct Election of United States Senators

Claudia Henneberry
SenateChambers

    This is the twentieth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23 from 9 a.m. to noon at Sycamore High School, 1021 Old Clarksville Pike, Pleasant View, Tennessee.   Federalism and The Separation of Powers are the two foundational concepts framed in the United States Constitution which, together, were designed to protect the liberties and natural rights of individual citizens. Federalism refers to the division of powers between a national government and individual state governments, while The Separation of Powers refers to the three branches of government – legislative, judicial, and executive – whose competing powers provide checks and balances on the threat of tyranny. The legislative branch, is in itself divided into two separate legislative bodies, the House of Representatives and the Senate, each with its own unique powers.  The Founding Fathers masterfully added yet another layer for safeguarding liberty through the method by which the members of the two legislative bodies would be elected. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Framers decided that the members of the House of Representatives would be elected directly by the people (Direct Election) and…

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Constitution Series: The Fourteenth Amendment – Original Intent and Unintended Consequences

Tennessee Star Staff
Constitution Series 14th Amendment

  This is the nineteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23 from 9 a.m. to noon at Sycamore High School, 1021 Old Clarksville Pike, Pleasant View, Tennessee. by John Harris   The Fourteenth Amendment was one of three amendments made to the United States Constitution in the five years following the end of the Civil War. These amendments were the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. These three amendments were all adopted as part of the Northern efforts to address circumstances in or related to the Southern states following the war. The Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment addressed several issues concerning the former slaves including the issue of citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of a person’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed and then passed just as the Civil War was ending. It was proposed at the same time that the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 was enacted. Congress proposed it to the States as an…

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Constitution Series: The Preamble and Its Author, Gouverneur Morris

Tennessee Star Staff
Preamble Morris

    This is the eighteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23 from 9 a.m. to noon at Sycamore High School, 1021 Old Clarksville Pike, Pleasant View, Tennessee.   The first fifty-three words of the Constitution – the Preamble – lay out The Who, the Why, the What, and the How of the 4,000 plus words that followed in the document it introduced: WHO: We the People of the United States, WHY: In order to form a more perfect union, WHAT: – establish Justice, – insure domestic Tranquility, – provide for the common defence, – promote the general welfare, – and secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity, HOW: do hereby ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Black’s Law Dictionary defines a Preamble as “An introductory statement in a constitution, statute, or other document explaining the document’s basis and objective; esp., a statutory recital of the inconveniences for which the statute is designed to provide a remedy.” As noted earlier in this Constitution Series, the United States Constitution written by the fifty-five delegates to the…

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Constitution Series: Revisiting the Tenth Amendment and the Powers Reserved to the States, Or to the People

Tennessee Star Staff
Madison

    This is the seventeenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   As we wrote about extensively earlier in this series, the foundational concept of Federalism in the United States Constitution is most specifically outlined in the Tenth Amendment: 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. One aspect of the Tenth Amendment very relevant to contemporary issues is that it makes absolutely no mention of reserving any powers not delegated to the federal government to cities or counties that are subdivisions of State governments. Indeed, the Constitution grants powers to only three entities–(1) the federal government, which it grants limited and enumerated powers, (2) the State governments, which along with (3) the people–and by that the Founders meant each of us as individual citizens–have all the powers not specifically delegated to the federal government reserved to them. The text of the Constitution, clearly enumerates thirty-three specific powers granted to the national government, as we explained in…

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Constitution Series: The Ninth Amendment

Claudia Henneberry
Tennessee Star - Constitution Series

    This is the sixteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   The Constitution was written for one particular purpose–to limit the powers of the general, or, national, government, therein securing the blessings of liberty by protecting the individual’s natural rights.  It is simply outlined in the Preamble, drafted brilliantly by Gouverneur Morris, a native New Yorker who represented Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention, and made clear the primary purpose for the Constitution and that the people are the ones for whom and by whom it was created beginning with the revolutionary words, We the People. During the consideration of the Bill of Rights, the concern by the founders was that if they specified certain rights of the people to be guarded by the national government, what if they neglected others?  How could they be sure that all the people’s God-given rights would be protected? Among others, this was a major concern for James Wilson, a Pennsylvania Congressman who would later serve on the first Supreme Court. Supporters of the Constitution, or Federalists, such as James Wilson and…

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Constitution Series: The Eighth Amendment and Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the fifteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   The Eighth Amendment contains one of the most famous phrases in American judicial history: “cruel and unusual punishment.” That phrase over the past half century has been the rallying cry around which opponents of capital punishment gather. But the Eighth Amendment is an important protector of two other rights: the prohibition of excessive bail requirements and the prohibition of the imposition of excessive fines: Excessive bail shall not be required, not excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The amendment protects the rights of the individual by prohibiting three specific acts of the state: (1) Excessive bail shall not be required. (2) Excessive fines shall not be imposed. (3) Cruel and unusual punishment shall not be inflicted. We begin our discussion of the Eighth Amendment with the best known clause: the prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment,” which opponents of capital punishment have cited over the past half century as proof that the execution of prisoners for murder or any severe crime is…

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Constitution Series: The Seventh Amendment

Tennessee Star Staff
The Jury by John Morgan

    This is the fourteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The Seventh Amendment is one of those steady but unspectacular amendments that does not feature prominently in many Supreme Court cases, because it specifies two relatively straightforward rights: (1) trial by jury and (2) finding of facts made by a jury can not be appealed or “re-examined.” 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 common law. You may note a phrase in that amendment with which you may not be familiar: “the rules of common law.” What, exactly, are “the rules of common law,” and what, while we’re at it, do we mean by “common law”? The Oxford English Dictionary provides the simplest explanation of what is meant by common law: “The part of English law that is derived from custom and judicial precedent rather than…

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Constitution Series: The Sixth Amendment

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the thirteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The Sixth Amendment, like the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment, primarily focuses on the protection of individual liberties against the police powers of the state: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have previously been 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. A good way to remember the Sixth Amendment is that it guarantees six very specific rights to every citizen: (1) If you ever accused of a crime, and prosecuted criminally, you have the right to a speedy and public trial (2) You have a right to be tried by an impartial jury of your…

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Constitution Series: The Third Amendment

Tennessee Star Staff

    This is the twelfth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. To modern eyes, the Third Amendment seems anachronistic. To the Founders, however, it was a critical protection of individual liberty: 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. The unwelcome quartering of troops was fresh in the minds of newly independent Americans, who rankled at the memory of their homes being taken over by British troops, almost always against the wishes of the owners, during the American Revolution. “The Third Amendment seems to have no direct constitutional relevance at present; indeed, not only is it the least litigated amendment in the Bill of Rights, but the Supreme Court has never decided a case on the basis of it,” Professor Gordon Wood of Brown University, a leading expert on the Federal Era of the new American Republic, wrote: The federal government today is not likely to…

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Constitution Series: The Golden Triangle of Freedom

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the eleventh of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. A remarkable aspect of the Constitution of the United States is that since its ratification in 1789 the American people have, for the most part, viewed it as a covenant agreement between themselves and the national government. It is a powerful document not simply because of the words it contains, but because the people have freely chosen to be governed by those words. Words written a parchment or typed into an I-phone have no impact unless they are accepted within a common belief system. This why “the rule of law,” particularly as it has developed here in the United States, is so central to the development and growth of a vibrant and dynamic society where individual freedom flourishes. In America, we call this freedom “constitutional liberty.” But, as Ronald Reagan famously said, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The Founders knew this, and recently a Chinese-born English scholar who resides in America expressed in very…

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Constitution Series: Civil Asset Forfeiture and the Fourth Amendment

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the tenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The Bill of Rights–the first ten amendments to the Constitution–were included in the original “covenant” that created the United States because many Americans feared that unless their individual rights were specifically articulated in our country’s founding documents they would be eventually be violated by those in power. The Fourth Amendment, in particular, offers protections to individuals against the police powers of the state: 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. Anyone who has watched one of the many police procedural dramas on television, like Law & Order, are very familiar with the two key elements of the amendment: (1) “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and…

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Constitution Series: The Fifth Amendment

Tennessee Star Staff

    This is the ninth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. Everyone who has watched a movie that includes a criminal trial or a Congressional hearing knows about one aspect of the Fifth Amendment: the right not to incriminate yourself. “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” reads the relevant clause of the amendment. Alleged crime boss Tony Accardo took the Fifth Amendment more than 170 times during the 1951 Kefauver Hearings in the United States Senate, a dramatic event captured on live television. But that important right is only one of five in the Fifth Amendment which guarantees individual liberties in civil and criminal trials and outlines “basic constitutional limits on police procedure,” the Cornell Law Institute notes. Here’s how the full text of the Fifth Amendment reads: 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…

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Constitution Series: Judicial Review

Tennessee Star Staff

    This is the eighth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The Separation of Powers and Federalism are two foundational concepts of the Constitution,  based on the idea that checks and balances between competing interests will prevent any one individual or group from obtaining and exercising abusive powers within our republic. In the national government, the checks and balances of the Separation of Powers were designed within the Constitution, which gave specific powers to the three equal branches of government— executive, legislative, and judicial–but also placed limits on the powers of each branch. The legislative branch, which passes laws, approves Presidential nominations for Cabinet positions and the Supreme Court and other federal courts, appropriates money, and can impeach the president and federal judges. The executive branch can veto legislation, nominate judges, and administers the day-to-day operations of the government. The judicial branch has asserted, without much resistance, the power to declare laws passed by Congress and Presidential actions unconstitutional–a principle commonly known as “judicial review.” Unlike the powers granted the…

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Constitution Series: The Second Amendment – Its Meaning, Purpose, and Scope

John Harris

    This is the seventh of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   The Second Amendment declares that individual citizens have a right to keep and bear arms. That right is not created by the Second Amendment but is recognized to naturally exist independent of the Constitution. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to make clear that the federal government lacks any authority to restrict or infringe that individual right. The right is not just the right of the individual to own arms that are suitable for hunting, self defense, recreational shooting or collecting – although each of those are within its scope. The Second Amendment, much like the First Amendment, also exists to protect a political right and the political power that was essential to founding of this nation and as indicated in the Declaration of Independence. That right is the supreme authority and the power of the citizens of any nation or government to change, abolish, redo or re-establish their government. At the time that the Second Amendment was written,…

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Constitution Series: The First Amendment

Claudia Henneberry
Tennessee Star - Constitution Series

    This is the sixth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The First Amendment was passed by Congress September 25, 1789, and ratified December 15, 1791 along with the nine other amendments that comprise The Bill of Rights. It reads: 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 First Amendment combines five specific rights into one fundamental law guaranteeing freedom of expression: (1) Freedom of Religion (2) Freedom of Speech (3) Freedom of the Press (4) Right to Peaceably Assemble (5) Right to Petition “The first amendment is the most important in the American Constitution because it protects the things that make us what we are, including talking, and writing, and worshiping,” Dr. Larry Arnn, professor of politics and history and president of Hillsdale College, wrote recently. The Founding Fathers knew that these unalienable rights already belonged to the…

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Constitution Series: How and Why the First Ten Amendments – the Bill of Rights – Were Proposed and Ratified in Less Than Three Years

Tennessee Star Staff

    This is the fifth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The first ten amendments to the Constitution – the Bill of Rights – were proposed in Congress and ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states in less than three years, a speed of action that seems improbable, given the undeveloped state of travel and communications at the time and the lengthy process more recent amendments to the Constitution have undergone. But the urgency with which the new nation acted upon the Bill of Rights simply confirms this key point: the secular covenant by which the citizens of the United States agreed to be governed consists of both the Constitution document delivered to the country by the Constitutional Convention, and the Ten Amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights proposed by the Congress and ratified by the States. There were four distinct phases in the formation of this secular covenant, or “solemn agreement,” and had not all four phases been completed, the agreement might not have held. (1) The Constitutional…

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Constitution Series: How and Why Thirteen States Ratified the Constitution: 1787 – 1790 (Part Two)

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star - Constitution Series

    This is Part Two in the fourth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. (You can read Part One of How and Why Thirteen States Ratified the Constitution: 1787 – 1790 here.) On January 9, the same day Connecticut officially said yes, 370 delegates to the Massachusetts ratifying convention convened at the Massachusetts State House in Boston.     Everyone knew that the outcome in Massachusetts, the second most populous of the thirteen states, was critical, and that the issue was very much in doubt, as Federalists and Anti-Federalists jockeyed for position in the lead up to the convention. “When Paul Revere learned that Sam Adams and John Hancock were reluctant to offer their support for the Constitution during the ratification fight, he organized the Boston mechanics into a powerful force and worked behind the scenes for the successful approval by the Massachusetts convention,” Constitution Facts notes. Proceedings began on a sour note, an indication of the contentious discussions yet to come, when the delegates began to complain about their…

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Constitution Series: How and Why Thirteen States Ratified the Constitution: 1787 – 1790

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star - Constitution Series

    This is the fourth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787 and told Mrs. Powel the delegates had given Americans “a republic, if you can keep it,” he was anticipating that at least nine of the thirteen states who were joined together under the Articles of Federation would eventually ratify the Constitution. Franklin was right, of course, but it would take three long years before all thirteen states were in the fold of the new republic. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention believed in the concept of the sovereignty of the people, so they made sure that the new republic would not be formally organized until two-thirds of the states–nine out of thirteen–held conventions to ratify the Constitution and their participation in the new republic. Until then, the United States of America, as a country, existed, but under the weak terms of the Articles of Confederation. Once nine states ratified the Constitution, that old form of…

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Constitution Series: The Electoral College and the Selection of the President

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the third of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The method of selection of a President to head the executive branch for a term of four years is the most notable illustration of the foundational concept of Federalism seen in the body of the text of the Constitution of the United States that emerged from the Constitutional Convention. Federalism, as we explained earlier in this series, “defines the relationship between the national government and each of the state governments that comprise our republic. Both entities–the national government and each state government–remain sovereign, while the powers of governance and responsibilities to the citizenry are balanced between the two.” And it was the Tenth Amendment, ratified in 1791 and part of the original constitutional “compact” or “covenant” between the states and the national government upon which our republic was organized: 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. “The executive Power…

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Constitution Series: The Separation of Powers

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the third part of the second of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   The Separation of Powers between three equal branches of the national government–legislative, executive, and judicial– along with Federalism are the two foundational concepts of the Constitution of the United States that protect the freedoms and liberties guaranteed to individual citizens. Both foundational concepts are the practical implementation of the Founding Fathers’ belief in the need for checks and balances to prevent the rise of uncontrolled abuses of power within one branch of government. “It is safe to say that a respect for the principle of separation of powers is deeply ingrained in every American,” the National Archives website says: The nation subscribes to the original premise of the framers of the Constitution that the way to safeguard against tyranny is to separate the powers of government among three branches so that each branch checks the other two. Even when this system thwarts the public will and paralyzes the processes of government, Americans have rallied to its defense. One Founding Father,…

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Constitution Series: Federalism

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

    This is the second part of the second of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   Federalism is a foundational concept framed in the Constitution of the United States which defines the relationship between the national government and each of the state governments that comprise our republic (thirteen such state governments in 1789, fifty now in 2017). Both entities–the national government and each state government–remain sovereign, while the powers of governance and responsibilities to the citizenry are balanced between the two. Federalism, along with The Separation of Powers within the national government (which we will discuss in tomorrow’s article) are the two foundational concepts of the Constitution that protect the freedoms and liberties guaranteed to individual citizens. “In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments,” James Madison, probably, or Alexander Hamilton, possibly, wrote of “the federal system of America” in Federalist Paper #51, one of the famous series of essays…

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Constitution Series: Three Things That Make the United States Constitution Unique in World History

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star - Constitution Series

    This is the second of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   Today’s high school students may yawn when they hear teachers describe what a world-changing document the United States Constitution was when it was ratified in 1788 and a new government was formed a year later in 1789. But a deeper look behind the scenes reveals the three dramatic innovations the Founding Fathers introduced in just 4,400 words that changed the course of history for the better over the next 228 years, not just in the United States of America, but around the word: A Single Written Agreement Was Now the Highest Authority for “The Rule of Law” in America Federalism The Separation of Powers 1. A Single Written Agreement Was Now the Highest Authority for “The Rule of Law” in America. Two-thirds of the four million residents of the United States in 1789 (67 percent) were of British ancestry. Another 14 percent were from other parts of Europe. Nineteen percent (750,000) were from Africa, the vast majority of whom…

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Constitution Series: A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Claudia Henneberry
Tennessee Star

  This is the first of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23.   Minutes after the Constitutional Convention adjourned in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, Elizabeth Powel, a friend of George Washington who hosted many social events for the political class of the time, asked Benjamin Franklin if the convention had given us a republic or a monarchy. “A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” the venerable 81-year-old delegate, ambassador, and inventor responded. Fifty-five delegates, from all the states except Rhode Island, attended that convention, which began four months earlier in May of that year under the premise of forming a more perfect union by revising the Articles of Confederation. You see, the United States of America was not officially formed as the republic of which we are currently citizens in 1783 when the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain acknowledged the independence and sovereignty of its former colonies, was signed. The Continental Congress of the thirteen rebellious colonies, convening in York Town, Pennsylvania (now simply called York), adopted the…

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The Tennessee Star Launches Constitution Series for Secondary School Students, Teachers and Parents

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

  FRANKLIN, Tennessee – The Tennessee Star announced today it is publishing the first of twenty-five weekly articles in its Constitution Series for secondary school students, teachers and parents tomorrow, Monday, April 3. “The idea behind this series is to present the important story of our Constitution to Tennessee secondary students in grades 8 through 12 in a compelling way that will engage them on both an intellectual and emotional level,” says Christina Botteri, managing editor of The Star. “Each week we will advance the narrative of the Constitution in chronological order. Along the way, secondary students can use these articles as a guide to prepare for The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which we will hold in Middle Tennessee on September 23,” she adds. “Students will compete at that event to win first, second, and third place honors at each grade level. So each grade – 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th – will have a champion. In addition, the grade level champions will compete to become The Overall Champion of The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee. The winner and overall champion, along with a parent, will win a grand prize of a trip to Washington, D.C.,” Botteri says. “About a dozen Tennesseans with experience in…

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Professional Educators of Tennessee to Sponsor The Tennessee Star Constitution Bee

Tennessee Star Staff

Professional Educators of Tennessee announced on Monday they will be sponsoring The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee. “It is vital that we rediscover the importance of our Constitution, and pass it along to the next generation,” J.C. Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, tells The Star. “We think a Constitution Bee is a good step to encourage that effort. The preservation of our liberties is an ongoing battle, something our Founders understood,” Bowman says. The event, to be held on Saturday, September 23 at a venue in Middle Tennessee still to be selected, is open to all secondary students in grades 8 through 12 who live in Tennessee. It is designed to focus on student knowledge of the Constitution and civics in the same way as the National Spelling Bee and the National Geography Bee. The top three students in each grade (8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th) will receive small cash prizes and be featured in profiles at The Tennessee Star. The five champions of the different grade levels will then compete for the title of Overall Champion of The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee. That overall champion, and a parent, will win a trip to Washington, D.C. Judges…

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