Post on 30-Mar-2020
Objectives: 3:3 Informal Amendments
o Students will examine the informal
methods of amending the
Constitution.
• (Pro 15:22) Without counsel
purposes are disappointed: but
in the multitude of counsellors
they are established.
Informal Amendments:
o The process by which many changes have been made in the Constitution that have not led to changes in the document’s written words.
o These informal amendments are the result of the day to day, year to year experiences of government under the constitution.
Informal Amendments:
1. The passage of basic legislation
by congress.
2. Actions taken by the President
3. Decisions of the Supreme Court.
4. Activities of political parties
5. Custom
BASIC LEGISLATION:
o Congress has been a major agent
of informal amendment in two
ways.
o First, it has passed many laws to
spell out several of the
Constitution’s brief provisions.
BASIC LEGISLATION:
o Congress has added flesh to the bones of those sections of the Constitution the Framers left purposely skeletal for Congress to add details and meaning as circumstances have required.
o For example, Article II creates only the offices of President and Vice President.
o The many departments, agencies, and offices in the huge executive branch have been created by acts of Congress.
BASIC LEGISLATION:
o Second, Congress has added to the Constitution by the way in which it has used many of its powers.
o The constitution does not directly answer such questions as what “interstate commerce” involves.
o In passing thousands of statutes under the Commerce Clause, Congress has defined the meaning of these words.
Executive Action:
o In the Constitution, congress declares war but the President is the commander in Chief of the nation’s armed forces.
o Acting under that authority, several Presidents have made war without the benefit of a congressional declaration of war.
o Presidents have used the armed forces abroad in combat without such a declaration on fewer than 200 separate occasions in American history.
Executive Agreement:
o A pact made by the President directly with the head of a foreign state.
o The principal difference between these executive agreements and treaties is that they need not be approved by the senate.
o Executive agreements are as legally binding as treaties.
Court Decisions
o The nation’s courts, most tellingly
the United States Supreme
Court, interpret and apply the
Constitution in many cases they
hear.
Party Practices:
o Nation’s political parties have also been a major source of informal amendments throughout the years.
o Constitution makes no mention of political parties.
o The Framers and George Washington despised it.
Party Practices:
o Neither Constitution, nor any law
provides for the nomination of
candidates for the presidency.
o From the 1830s, the major
parties have held national
conventions to do just that.
Party Practices:
o The parties have converted the Electoral College, the body that makes the formal selection of the nation’s President, from what the Framers intended into a “rubber stamp” for the popular vote in presidential elections.
o Both houses business is based on the political parties.
Customs:
o Unwritten customs may be as
strong as written laws, and many
customs have developed in our
governmental system.
o Again, there are many examples.
o By custom, are 14 executive
departments.
Customs:
o On each of the eight occasions
when a President died in office, the
Vice President succeeded to that
office, most recently in 1963.
o Yet, the written words of the
Constitution did not provide for this
practice until the adoption of the
25th Amendment in 1967.
Customs:
o The no-third term was a tradition that started with George Washington but FDR broke it and then became the 22d Amendment to the Constitution.
o So what has been an informal amendment, became a written part of the Constitution itself.