Welcome back. We're in the middle of a guided tour, so to speak, of the written Constitution and we're preceding In textual order. We've already covered the Preamble, how we the people of the United States ordained and established this the Constitution in an epic act of continental democracy and free speech, the likes of which had never really before been seen in world history and, and, and in an, an event that really Radically changed the course of world history and that we the people in United States did again establish that Constitution for reasons of, of national defense to secure the common defense and thereby preserve the secure the blessings of liberty for that generation of Americans and its Its posterity. So that was the preamble, and that was the beginning, of, the, our, our guided tour. Then we talked about Article One, the Legislative Branch, this kind of, New Congress. Borrowing the name of the old Congress, but, but changing its powers and structure quite considerably. Legislative powers vested, in art, bah, in Article One in a,um, in this, this congress. We talked about the executive power vested in a president, a newfangled president who'd be way more than a governor state governor. But, but much less dangerous than, than an English monarch. And that's Article Two of the Constitution, the executive power vested in a president. And, and we talked about last and and I think least among the branches of the Federal Government. We talked about the judiciary, the judicial power invested in judges, by Article 3 of the Constitution. Now at this point I, I hope, actually, maybe you, you've noticed two things, or two things that come to your mind. First, constitution's actually pretty well-organized, sort of preamble, how it's going to be ordained and established, and legislature, executive, judiciary, each in its own separate article, kind of separation of powers textually, article one, article two, article three. So I hope you notice that the Constitution actually has a rather ni- nice and tidy cohesive organization. An ordinary farmer 225 years ago could, could understand the thing. And it is designed to be understood. The article's confederation, the pre, the predecessor documents were much more of a jumble much less well organized I think. And some of the state constituions were realativy tidy, Massechusets constitution comes to mind, others were a bit more of a jamble. So one thing you might have noticed is the constitution is pretty well organized. So I hope the lectures so far have been fairly well organized too. Cause we're just tracking that textual flow. Now it's complicated of course, because you can't really talk about one branch in complete isolation to the other. Let's take the veto power. It's mentioned in Article One, because it's part of the process by which laws are made. But of course, it's a power of the president. and, and he's front and center in Article II. Or, let's talk about presidential impeachment. Well, it's a limit on presidential power, but the impeachment powers are vested in the legislature and, the House of Representatives which gets to in effect indict a president, charge him. And the Senate which, which tries them and so two, if a Judge is impeached that is an Article 3 issue because it involves limitation on the judicial power, but it is also an Article 1 issue, because the house basically indicts the Senate, tries a thing in the Senate when it, when it tries an impeachment it is sitting as a court of sorts. And so, that's a kind of judicial power, if you will. So, so I hope you've noticed it's pretty well organized, but these things kind of fit together and you can't fully think about one branch of government without thinking about how it, it checks and balances, and interacts with is blended with to some extent, other branches of government even though, there's a basic presented separation of powers in Article One, Article Two, Article Three, the three articles all of which begin with a kind of vesting clause. Legislative power vested generally in the Congress. Executive power vested generally in a President. And, and judicial power vested in court. So I hope that's one thing you noticed and And maybe that, the second thought that may have come into your mind is like, well what's left? I mean, we've done how the Constitution is going to be ordained and, and we've got three branches of government so, aren't we done? Not quite. Today we're going to end in, in this lecture, and in its in the next one we're going to talk about Article 4 of the Constitution. And, it focuses mainly on relations between the states. Think about, all kind of horizontal federalism. Federalism sometimes means the relationship between the state governments and the central government, the federal government. But sometimes, it can also refer to, and the things are connected, more horiz-. And that, and sometimes. And that, that first thing is called vertical federalism. There's the central government kind of above the states, to some extent. Because when the federal government is acting within its powers. It's competence is supreme, the supreme law of the land. We're going to talk about that in more detail in later lectures. That's hori, that's excuse me, that's vertical federalism, the, the central government kind of above the states. But federalism is also a, a horizontal concept, the relationship of sister states among themselves. And, and the vertical and the horizontal are connected. Everything's connected in the Constitution, but Article Four focuses essentially on the states. And we've seen them before. We've glimpsed them before. Of course, powers generally not given to Congress under Article One are going to be left to, to, to state legislatures, but Article Four brings states front and center. And not just states, but what about those parts of the United States. That aren't states, what about territories for example? Article Four is going to focus on that. So, it's going to in part tell us how united really are the states horizontally as well as vertical, and it's going to remind us that the United States actually strictly speaking in compasses more than stated. For example, encompasses the national seat, today known as Washington, DC. That's not a state. It's not represented in the House or the Senate, but it's obviously part of the United States. It's, it's where basically the government of the United States resides. And so two territories are going to be and always have been, part of the United States. And Article Four is going to focus on, and front and center, and in this discussion of Article Four, we're going to see really the same great themes that we've been glimpsing throughout our tour. We're going to see the importance of democracy in self-government another word for a, a, kind of a synonym, really, for democracy, at the founding, was republicanism. The two are actually very similar as we're going to talk about, in the next lectures. So, you're going to see themes of democracies slash republicanism, popular sovereignty, popular self rule. We're going to see the issue of slavery, and the companion issue of race, emerge yet again. As we've been seeing it throughout. And we're we saw it even in the question like, who is the people? We the people? Who counts and who doesn't count? Do free blacks count? Do slaves count? And Article Four is going to tee that issue up centrally. So, democracy, self government, race and slavery, and the importance of national security and in Geography, and Geostrategy will be, another thing that we see in Article Four. Or, as we saw, that theme in the preamble and in Articles One, Two, and, and Three. For example on Geography, recall that the difference between the Supreme Court and the lower Federal Courts is basically that the lower Federal Courts are geographically distributed throughout the country whereas the Supreme Court is going to be in the National capital. And in that difference you can actually begin to understand Marbury versus Madison which says you can't expand the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court beyond the trial jurisdiction, beyond what the constitution provides and one idea is kind of a geographic idea. Certain things are supposed to be tried in the nation center, but other things are actually supposed to be tried. They can be buried in lower federal courts and these lower federal courts are going to be picked. They're judges, just like Supreme Court Justices basically. Nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate. But they're going to sit in the hinterlands in the states rather than in the national capital. So, these themes of, of democracy and, and and geography slash Geostrategy, which we've which we've been seeing, and slavery, and race, which we've been seeing in, Articles One, Two, and Three, and in the Preamble, are also evident in Article Four. I'm going to come back to this picture which begins chapter Seven of America's Constitutional biography, which is our, sort of, handbook for this part of the course. Every chapter begins, remember, with a picture. And if you understand the picture, you really understand the deep ideas of the chapter. I'm going to come back to this picture at the end of the next lecture. But, to just to anticipate a bit, this a picture in the beginning of chapter 7 is, from, the printer, Benjamin Franklin. It's generally reckoned the first political cartoon, maybe ever, Franklin was a very inventive fellow. Bifocals, the Franklin stove, the lightning rod, He could be given credit as having invented the idea of, of political cartoons, and this is the, the first one. It's from, 1754, way before the American Revolution. And, Ben Franklin is urging a kind of union of sorts of the different colonies. With the caption "join or die." I'm going to come back to this again at the end of the next lecture. But, just to remind you of how the United States begins. It begins as a series of British colonies in North America. And, originally there, these colonies are settled at different times. Populated by different demographic groups. so, folks from some parts of England end up more in some parts of the new world and from other parts of, of the British empire and, and Europe They end up in, in, in, in other colonies. So, they're not all kind of homogeneous demographically. They, they begin as these widely scattered outposts on the Atlantic seaboard. Founded at different times for different purposes. Sometimes by business ventures, seeking to make a quick buck. Others by the, the British monarchy itself. Still others, by, religious decenters and others trying to sort of escape, the old world and, and create, new world, self government as best they, they can. while, professing allegiance to the crown but trying to the British crown, but trying to preserve as much freedom as, as is, and self-government as is possible. Well, as these colonies grow and expand, they start to verge on each other. Borders sometimes get shifted around, but the colonies, you need to understand, are legally distinct from each other. And, they're connected to the British Crown, but not really quite to each other. Imagine a kind of wheel with spokes from each colony to the same king, in, in the center, but not much of a rim connecting. The colonies to each other, in 1930, for example, just to flash forward. The British Empire, the British Commonwealth, consists of a whole bunch of different entities, that they all have the same common crown, but there not tightly connected to each other, and you've got Kenya, and India, and Ireland, and Canada, and New Zealand, and Australia, and they all have a common crown, but not much connection to each other. That America, in say the 1750's, and there are British North American colonies to the north and in Nova Scotia, and, and Halifax, and, and to the south in the West Indies, but and Franklin, Ben Franklin in 1754 thinks there should be kind of more connection among the colonies. He himself as a continentalist. He's born in Massachussetts and he at a young age with kind of pennies in his pocket. Just a young man setting out to make his fortune, he, he leaves Massachusetts goes to New York briefly but ends up in Philadelphia where he does find fame and, and fortune. and, but he's imaging the continentalist that he is way before others are. Because most other Americans actually don't leave their home colonies. Most people in the, in the 18th Century lived and died in a 50 mile radius, and many of them sort of never ventured beyond that, that. But, Franklin does, he's a continentalist, and as early as the 1750's, he's saying, we should create more of a union among the colonies. Still, in 1750's under the British umbrella, but there should be more connection actually across these, these different colonies. He proposes, there's a, there's a, a meeting, a gathering, a conclave a congress if you will. Among us some of the different colonies, they meet in Albany, New York, in 1754. And Franklin proposes a plan in which the colonies together will regulate intercolonial affairs. They'll be a council, kind of like NATO or the EEU. And, they'll regulate interstate affairs, and they will control, and they will regulate western territory and handle continental defense and elect a sort of a, and the King will, will pick maybe a presiding officer, a Governor of all the United Colonies. And, this will all be under the, the, the supervision of Parliament and the crown, but the individual colonial legislatures aren't that interested in seeding power to some, central, council and, and Britain doesn't seem so interested either in bringing all these colonies together, because if you bring them together, who knows what will happen when they start talking to each other. Britain, so, Britain isn't so keen on it, the colonial legislators aren't, aren't so keen on it, so this idea goes nowhere, in the 1750's. But see, Franklin the inventor, he's trying to, as it were, re-invent the wheel. He's trying to create a new kind of wheel that won't just have spokes from the center to the different colonies. He's trying to add a rim to the wheels, so the colonies will be more connected to each other. But this wheel, so Franklin is, so to speak reinventing the wheel, and, but the wheel goes nowhere in the 1750's. But, his ideas become a model for the Articles of Confederation, after Independence after 1776. Now, 13 colonies have decided that together they're going to, join hands, and, and wage war, a war of, of continental liberation against the crown. So they're going to, they're in this together and now they need some sort of mechanism to coordinate their, their, military strategy, and their defense expenditures, and their foreign policy, their, their treaties, visa via the rest of the world. They're going to need more of a, a rim, and some of Franklin's ideas that he had floated in the 1750's have come to the fore, actually. And, and, and, one section of, of the Articles of Confederation, remember it's not so well organized as a document. Article Four of the articles of confederation actually has some provisions that become with a little tweaking, and we'll pay attention to some of those tweaks but some of these provisions of Article Four of the articles of confederation that builds on Franklin's earlier model, will become Article Four of the US Constitution. So here's one idea, that basically people like Franklin should be able to go from one state to another state. Remember they're no longer colonies now they're state. They should be able to go from Massachusetts to New York to Pennsyvania as Franklin, as, as a young man, had gone from Massachusetts to New York to Pennsylvania and not be treated as aliens, not be treated as outsiders. So one idea is, that your entitled as, as an American, to the priv as an American citizen to the privileges and immunities of citizenship in other states. So this idea that there should be interstate privileges and immunities, a free ingress egress. We should be able to go from one state to another. In fact, maybe even relocate and move and become a citizen of another state. and, but even if you're just a visitor, you should be not you should be not discriminated against. You should be treated as a, an insider rather than as an alien. That's the idea. Privilege, interstate privileges and immunities of citizenship. You see this in the EU today, for example. You know, you should be able to get a job in another country in the EU and, and you shouldn't have to have a passport to travel from one EU nation to the other. Well that's the idea of Article Four, that the free mobility among the states and, and, to treat citizens of one state as insiders in another state. Well, one important change that Article Four of the constitution makes is under the articles of confederation. Poppers vag, and vagabonds and were excepted from this so if you are poor you know a state could basically exclude you out the boarder. But Article Four gets rid of the constitution, gets rid of that language. So, now in the future a penniless Ben Franklin, leaving Massachusetts to make his, his fortune in New York or in Pennsylvania can't be excluded, can't be barred at the gate. So that's I think, a democratic legalitarian, reform. Another thing is that the constitution is better worded it's Article Four on privileges and immunities than, than the Articles the Confederation were, Articles of Confederation were a little bit confused. Constitution, for example, is going to make clear that when it comes to naturalization of foreigners, people born abroad who come to the United States, individual states shouldn't have that power, the central government should have that power. So, it shouldn't in the authority of any one state to make someone from Europe, for example, an American. That should be decided by the United States rather than the individual states. but, couple of questions. One: Who exactly is a citizen? In particular, what about, because there's not quite a definition, a clear definition of who is a citizen. In order to be president you have to be a citizen of the United States and member of the House or the Senate of the United States. But what does that mean? And in particular can black people, free black people, not slaves, free black people be citizens? Well, I think the best read in the constitution is yes they can be if their state, their home state recognizes their citizenship. Free blacks fought, at Bunker Hill, and in, in Massachusetts. And, voted for the constitution in, in Massachusetts and several other states at the founding and were treated completely equally, in several of the states, and Article Four does not use the word white. It could have used that word. Actually, South Carolina wanted it to use that word, but South Carolina got out-voted on that. In the Articles of Confederation, in implementing parts of the Articles of Confederation, sometimes the word, actually, white, was used in some context, but not, in efforts again to implement the Articles of Confederation, but not in the Constitution. So, I think the best reading of Article Four is it has no race test and if it had actually the people of Massachusetts would have been unhappy with that. They voted down, a Massachu, a proposed state constitution in 1778. Because it had some racial qualifications and the people of Massachusetts, in some places, didn't like that. They were offended by race tests. But in the and, and so the, that word is purposely omitted from the constitution. but, in the 1850's, the Supreme Court, which is going to be popu, which is populated by justices picked by presidents. Presidents picked by an electoral college, which leans toward the south, because of the three fifths clause. This pro-southern Supreme Court presided over by Roger Taney, who replaces, succeeds John Marshall, Taney is Andrew Jackson's man he was put on the court he used to be Jackson's cabinet, he's put on the court by Andrew Jackson. Taney in a case called Dred Scott in 1857 is going to say several things. But, one of the things he's going to say is free Blacks can never be citizens, even if they were born free in Massachusetts and Massachusetts calls them a citizen. Even if their father, even if they vote Massachusetts, even if their freeborn father voted in Massachusetts, even if their freeborn grandfather voted on, for the constitution and, and fought at bunkers hill. Taney says, no matter, free blacks, people descended from, Africa, can never be citizens of the United States, never be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. Now, I think that was a mistaken reading. And and it's going to precipitate The Civil War. Lincoln is going to have a strong reaction to, other elements of Dred Scott. Not so much that one, but other aspects of Dred Scott. And so in our next lecture we're going to, talk a lot more about race, and slavery, and how it plays out throughout art, Article Four and, is eventually going to help us understand why the early Constitution, this very well-organized Constitution ultimately fails in the 1860s. So stay tuned. [MUSIC]
