Declaration of Independence: reasons for leaving British Empire based on Enlightenment ideas

• Parts/structure of Declaration: preamble (most important for AP exam because it has the Enlightenment ideals), list of problems with George III, resolution for independence

• Jefferson says that since he wants to cut ties with Britain and turn the colonies into a separate nation, he should explain why, which is what he does in the document

• Document is meant for the public (even though it’s problems with George III)

  • Purpose: rally support from troops for revolution AND get foreign allies to help them out by showing them Britain’s flaws

• Natural rights and Locke’s ideas: “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”, important quote because it’s saying that rights originate from creator (not government) so government can’t take them away

• Social contract and popular sovereignty and Rousseau: “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, governments are actually supposed to help protect those rights

• Social contract (again): “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish [a government that infringes on unalienable rights]”, basically saying that people are allowed to get rid of tyrannical governments and replace them with better ones that will protect their rights

Federalist 10: factions won’t be a problem because the US is a large republic

• Describes how liberty will be protected against tyranny of majority

• Founders didn’t want pure democracy because then majority would always win over minority

• Faction: group of citizens (majority or minority) that unite around a shared belief and try to impose legislature favoring their belief on the whole nation, thought of as a threat by both federalists and anti-federalists

• Remove causes of factions (first proposed solution): bad idea

  • Threat to citizens’ liberty, destroying liberty to control factions is worse than having factions at all

  • Other way to do it is make everyone have the same opinion but that won’t happen because different opinions will always form

• Control effects of factions (second proposed solution): republican style government (not pure democracy) can be used to control effects

  • As the nation grows in population and becomes a large republic, it becomes less probable for one faction to be powerful enough and have enough support to overpower the rest

  • More people solves it in two ways

    • Dilutes the effect of any single faction

    • Causes all factions to compromise to get anything done which then becomes better for more people and the general society instead of just a single group

Brutus 1: arguing against the new constitution (powerful central government) and the dangers it may pose to liberty

• Need to understand debate between Federalist 10 and Brutus 1

• Asks if confederated government is best for the country (says confederacy is definitely better than republic for US)

  • Confederated government: like Articles of Confederation, states had all the power and the national government barely existed, lots of power to states, very little power to centralized national government

• Problems with Necessary and Proper (Elastic) clause: if the Constitition was ratified, the national government would have way too much power and could abuse it and become tyrannical just like Britain did and then we would be right where we started

  • Elastic clause: article I section 8, says that Congress can pass any law needed to carry out eneumerated powers

• Problems with Supremacy clause: the national government can just override any small thing the states do that they don’t like, which causes them to be too powerful and there would be no power left for the states

  • Supremacy clause: article VI, national government laws trump over any conflicting state laws

• Any government can only collect a limited amount of taxes or else citizens can revolt and the Constitution gives the federal government the power to collect taxes so the states wouldn’t be able to tax that much without having a revolt so state governments would have no power with so little money from taxes

  • Also has same argument for courts using supremacy clause

• Also argues that a large republic wouldn’t be possible (Montesquieu’s idea) because it’s not possible for representatives to represent everyone properly because there’s so many people and the people would be disconnected from their rulers and that’s bad

Articles of Confederation: strong state government and weak (almost nonexistent) national government

• After becoming independent from Britain, the US had no government so the Articles were the first government of the US

  • Only formed because a national government was needed for affairs and business with other countries

• Confederation: form of government where several smaller governments (states) come together loosely to make a centralized government

• Says that states have powers right away to emphasize it

• States are supreme and they have all powers not explicitly given to Congress (which were very few, leaving most power to the states)

• Established only legislative branch (article V) where each state gets one vote

• Article VI gives limitations of national government: no taxing, no making an army or navy (can only get from the state militias if needed)

• Powers of Congress in article IX (very late to show that they don’t want it having power) and the powers were very few (settle disputes between states, etc)

  • Can’t declare war unless 9 states agree (supermajority) which is really hard to do

• Very hard to amend: article XIII, need unanimous vote which is really hard (especially because Rhode Island always said no to everything)

Constitution: established republican style government with a more centralized federal government

• Article I: legislative branch

  • Longest section, outlines powers of Congress, longest because the branch representing the people is most important

  • Section 8: enumerated powers of Congress

    • Tax

    • Borrow money

    • Raise national military

    • Coin money

    • Declare war

    • Elastic clause: gives Congress power to make all laws that are “necessary and proper” to carry out its enumerated powers, expands congressional power a lot so anti-federalists didn’t like it because it gives Congress too much power

• Article II: executive branch

  • Commander in chief of army, navy, and militia (checks and balances)

  • President’s job is to enforce laws passed by Congress and has to approve laws before they get passed

  • Can veto laws (checks and balances)

• Article III: judicial branch

  • Establish SCOTUS but Congress can establish other courts

    • Judiciary act of 1789: Congress making more courts

  • Original jurisdiction for cases of: ambassadors, states as party

    • Hear case for first time

  • Appellate jurisdiction: all other cases

    • Can only hear appeals for results of lower court cases

  • Judicial review: SCOTUS can see if laws are constitutional, established in Marbury v. Madison case

• Article IV: relations (between national and state and between multiple states)

• Article V: amendment process

  • Two part process, more achievable than process under the Articles

  • Proposal: Congress or state conventions can propose, 2/3 vote needed to propose

  • Ratification: must be accepted by 3/4 of the states (state legislatures or state ratifying convention)

  • Total of 27 amendments to the Constitution

• Article VI: national supremacy

  • Supremacy clause: national laws win over contradictory state laws

• Article VII: ratification process

• Guarantee of bill of rights is why states signed it that were iffy at first

Federalist 51: separation of powers

• If people were angels or if we were governed by angels, we wouldn’t need government or controls on government respectively

• Government exists to protect liberty of the people because we are not angels but need to make sure government isn’t too powerful so separation of powers/checks and balances so the government controls the government

• Branches created so they balance and limit each others power

• Each branch is independent of others so they don’t influence each other/do too many things and the powers of each branch need to be almost equal

• More power to Congress but that’s because it directly represents the people so you divide congressional power between two houses (bicameral legislature)

• Power is also divided between national and state levels (federalism)

• More competing factions = harder for one faction to dominate

• Best way to maintain liberty is to set everything (all interests) against each other

Federalist 70: single executive is good

• Anti-federalists didn’t like that the Constitution created a single executive because they were afraid that a single executive would become tyrannical and were in favor of a multi person executive instead so that no one person could become like a king

• Hamilton thought that an executive had to be energetic (act quickly and decisively)

• Need unity and decisiveness in the executive

  • More executives leads to less energy of the executive branch so their ability to do their jobs will go down

  • In history, civilizations with multiple executives created division and the effectiveness of the office was hindered which would be bad in an emergency

  • Multiple executives could create one faction per executive which would cause conflict

  • Legislative branch: slow and deliberate because there are so many representatives so they have to compromise so the laws passed are better for more people (slow and deliberate is good in the legislative branch), but this same slowness would be bad for the executive branch

• With multiple executives, it becomes hard to place responsibility for tyranny

  • May be impossible to say which of multiple executives abused their power so the tyrant may be reelected because no one knows that they are the tyrant

  • If there is one executive and there is tyranny, then the people know exactly who to blame and not reelect

Federalist 78: defends judicial branch proposed by Constitution

• No courts under Articles (got messy) so America needed a judicial system

• Anti-federalists didn’t like that the president chose justices (no say from the people) and that judges got life tenue under good behavior (too much power)

• Hamilton said life tenure was important because: independent and precedent

  • Judiciary would be independent from other branches and could rule with impartiality without trying to please people to get reelected

  • Having life tenure would allow a judge to know so many precedents so they can make the best decisions compared to people who are only there for a couple of years

• Scope and limits of judicial branch’s power

  • Says courts should have power of judicial review (saying if a law is unconstitutional) because of their nature

    • Some said this would give courts more power than legislative (people’s branch) but Hamilton said that if Congress passes an unconstitutional law it should already be void because the Constitution is above the law

    • Balances and checks the legislature’s power

Letter from a Birmingham jail: equal protection clause supported and motivated social movements (black civil rights movement)

Background info

• MLK: fought for civil rights differently than others, non-violent direct action, did this because governments didn’t give black people the same rights as white people

  • Boycotted and did sit in’s and paraded in the streets of Birmingham, AL which got him arrested

• White clergymen (mostly sympathetic to civil rights movement) published an open letter in a newspaper saying that King’s practices/methods were ineffective and that black people should instead wait for white people to work through courts/legislature to get rights

  • Letter from a Birmingham jail is King’s response to that

Breakdown of letter/content

• King is in Birmingham (instead of his home of Atlanta) because he can’t just watch everything happen in Birmingham while he does nothing about it because all communities are connected

  • “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”

• The non-violent protest wasn’t a crazy last-minute thing but it was carefully planned where everyone was trained and prepared

  • Steps of training

• Non-violent protest makes it so that a community is forced to confront an issue because they can’t ignore it anymore because it becomes dramatized

  • No negotiation to solve the issue unless there’s a crisis that makes it necessary and raises the stakes

• Clergymen’s idea to wait would never work

  • “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”

  • “‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’”

  • Hearing wait helps for a moment but then makes you so frustrated when it never happens

  • “Justice too long delayed is justice denied”

  • Have waited for 340 years for rights, won’t wait anymore

  • Whites can only ask them to wait because they’ve never been on the receiving end of discrimination and “wait'“

• King was disappointed in the moderation (not racism) of sympathetic whites like the clergymen

  • White moderates (more devoted to order than to justice) are the real obstacle when it comes to black civil rights

    • Not huge racist groups because they made their intentions of being racist clear but white moderates urged caution and restraint because they would disrupt society which made King impatient

  • “appalling silence of good people”

  • Justice comes through hard work, not waiting for the inevitable

• Embraces being called an extremist

  • There are many good extremists: Jesus was an extremist for love, Apostle was extremist for Gospel, Socrates was extremist for truth

  • If King was able to join that list he would be proud/honored

• Black people suffered so much to help America so they deserve rights