United States ConstitutionEssay Preview: United States ConstitutionReport this essayThe United States Constitution:After the War the 13 colonies first formed a very weak central government under the Articles of Confederation. This government lacked, for example, any power to impose taxes, as it had no method of enforcing payment. It had no authority to override tax laws and tariffs between states. The Articles required unanimous consent from all the states before any changes could take effect. States took the central government so lightly that their representatives were often absent. For lack of a quorum, the national legislature was frequently blocked from making even ineffectual changes.
In September 1786 commissioners from five states met in the Annapolis Convention to discuss adjustments to the Articles of Confederation that would improve commerce. They invited state representatives to convene in Philadelphia to discuss improvements to the federal government. After debate, the Confederation Congress endorsed the plan to revise the Articles of Confederation on February 21, 1787. Twelve states accepted this invitation and sent delegates to convene in May 1787. The resolution calling the Convention specified its purpose was to propose amendments to the Articles, but the Convention ignored its limitations. It voted to keep deliberations secret and decided to draft a new fundamental government design, which eventually stipulated that only 9 of the 13 states would have to ratify for the new government to go into effect. These actions were criticized as exceeding the conventions mandate and existing law. However, Congress, noting dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation government, agreed to submit the proposal to the states despite the exceeded terms of reference. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was completed in Philadelphia, and the new government it prescribed came into existence on March 41789, after fierce fights over ratification in many of the states.
The U.S. Constitution styles itself the “supreme law of the land.” Courts have interpreted this phrase to mean that when laws that have been passed by state legislatures or by the Congress are found to conflict with the federal constitution, these laws are to have no effect. Decisions by the Supreme Court over the course of two centuries have repeatedly confirmed and strengthened the doctrine of Constitutional supremacy, or the supremacy clause.
Although the U.S. Constitution was motivated in no small part by elite mercantilists and financiers desire to minimize the political impact of non-owning classes and smallholding classes on elites property and prerogatives, the Constitution guarantees the legitimacy of the American state by invoking the American electorate. The people exercise authority through state actors both elected and appointed; some of these positions are provided for in the Constitution. State actors can change the fundamental law, if they wish, by amending the Constitution or, in the extreme, by drafting a new one.
Different kinds of public officials have varying levels of limitations on their power. Generally, middle and other working class officials have extremely limited powers in American government. Their powers are merely discretionary. However, elite actors in government and certain departments like the military have few checks on their power, aside from divergent interests. Ideally, however, their official actions ought to conform to the Constitution, and to the laws made in accordance with the Constitution; but there is little by way of mechanisms for enforcement. Elected officials can only continue in office if they are re-elected at periodic intervals, which they typically are because of the structural limitations on political organization and participation. Appointed officials serve, in general, at the pleasure of the person or authority who appointed them, and may be removed at any time. The exception to this practice is the lifetime appointment by the President of Justices of the Supreme Court and
Practicality
The most obvious and common use for the power of executive branch officials who have varying levels of limitations is in the executive in the service of public education. All major public schools have separate policy, curriculum, administration, and administration departments that work together to make public learning accessible to all students. The schools have a national curriculum, with their own student-centered educational programs. The National Institutes of Health has two programs, with its own Department of Education and a National Institutes of Health, serving each other’s national interests. The School District Commission provides guidance on education, teaching, and research programs to the public, and is responsible for coordinating all public education activities. Public schools also have an independent academic staff that does extensive research for the public. In a typical day, the Commission is responsible for providing a wide range of public programs and services to the public, including the education system, the National Institutes of Health, and a new and improved reading and science curriculum known as “The Common Core, the curriculum for a better American school system.”
Although the school-district functions are often highly concentrated at public education levels, these functions are fairly evenly distributed across the public, especially after the Great Depression, when the role of primary school teachers (and the role education teachers should play in building and sustaining a healthy, balanced economy) shrank significantly. The major political programs currently under-funded by public money in the private sector seem to be the current issues on the ballot next year, but efforts to eliminate the need for additional funding and to develop alternatives could help raise more money, or give the new generation a more balanced view of how public school is run.
The Common Core has raised hundreds of millions of dollars by providing federal and state oversight and funding. It has been largely successful so far, especially at the state and local level, by developing a balanced approach to dealing with public education across the nation. An example of such an approach? A $250 million national program for local government funded by the Education Department.
The Obama Administration has developed the new Common Core to ensure that there will be effective competition for teachers for Federal contracts; state mandates on training; and the Common Core to create a process for establishing best practice for public opinion in making and overseeing federal and state decision-making. In addition, the government has recently implemented changes to both state and local education policy and curriculum, which must be implemented with the public input as to when to implement the new Common Core and when the next one should follow.
In short, the Common Core seems like an effort to strengthen the power of the Department of Education so the public more easily understands the workings of the Office of Management and Budget. It also allows policymakers to better understand how to best improve teaching. It provides a great base case for the success and continued improvement of educational standards and curricula in the United States.
Proponents of the Common Core acknowledge that it provides a fair process for evaluating and evaluating new federal standards, but their efforts are based on the argument that it would be fundamentally dishonest for the Department of Education to “decide how and where we implement the new version of our curriculum, which includes standardized tests, critical and critical thinking, and high-level knowledge of the country’s history and traditions” as opposed to its traditional traditional version, which allows government to establish best practices that match the “needs of each group”. For students, standards and critical thinking would be both equally important, but these standards and critical thinking would be different. It is impossible to know, for example, how students who take the AP and ABA tests are meant to read the same books and interpret different points of view on an issue if they don’t even know of critical reasoning skills already. This will be a problem for both students and educators in the future, because schools will use the same set of standards that are required for the highest level of public education systems. Such a scenario would put more strain on the Department of Education’s budgets compared to those of a private charter school that meets low standards for academic outcomes.
Proponents of the new Common Core, when considered together with