Unit 6: The Constitution Lesson 3: The Constitution’s Powers

The framers of the Constitution also got ideas from Enlightenment philosophers  From who???

What was The Enlightenment? A movement that spread through much of Europe in the 1700s It was a time in Western philosophy & cultural life when reason was often used as the main source of authority

What do you mean by “reason”? Think of “reasoning” to be like “thinking” about something  Example George Bush has stayed out of the public eye since his presidency. He probably used reasoning to figure out that he was not the best public speaker During the Enlightenment, people started to think about/ question a lot of things about society

Example of people starting to question things about society during the Enlightenment: rather than just accepting that the King & Queen were in charge, b/c they had been for centuries, many people started to question/think about who should be in charge. Who would make the best leaders of society?  The best leaders might not be part of the royal family

Another example: Rather than just accepting everything that the church said as truth, many people started questioning whether some of the church’s teachings were actually the truth- Were they provable? Did things that the church said happened really happen?  Or were many church traditions just superstitions?

So they called this era the Enlightenment. What does “enlighten” mean? If you “enlightened” yourself on the topic of thunderstorms, it would mean you learned about thunderstorms

Things that Enlightenment philosophers studied & questioned & learned about led to (among 1,000s of other things) 2 major things that they wanted for governments  Enlightenment philosophers wanted 1. more centralization of gov’t power  2. more rights for common people

Really? He was an Enlightenment philosopher? E.P.s you already know: Ben Franklin Thomas Jefferson

Beethoven Mozart Sir Isaac Newton

So which Enlightenment philosophers’ ideas were used in the Constitution? John Locke, who wrote The Two Treatises on Government in 1690, believed that gov’t should function as a contract between the ruler & the ruled

Locke believed that if a ruler violated the rights of the people, the people had a right to rebel

Other E.P.s whose ideas were incorporated into the Constitution included Baron de Montesquieu, who, as we now know, contributed the idea of separation of powers

Out with the old, in with the new Division of power proved to be one of the biggest differences between the Constitution & the Articles of Confederation, which it replaced

Federalism Debate over who should have the most power (national or state gov’ts) had been going on for a while Under the Articles, the states had more power

Under the new Constitution, The states delegated/gave up some of those powers to the national gov’t  But the states still held onto some powers

This new division of power was called federalism: Gov’t power is divided between the national government & the states

Back to Federalism Federalism gives the U.S. a flexible system of gov’t  The people elect both state & national officials (Division of power between national gov’t and the states)

The national gov’t has the power to… act for the country as a whole States have power over many local matters

Which is more powerful? Because of the Supremacy Clause, when state and national law conflict with each other, national law has higher authority