Maybe you’ve read the Constitution a ton of times. Maybe you’ve never read it. Maybe you even have one somewhere in your home! But, even for us civics lovers, there are times we forget what exactly is in it. However, by the end of this episode, you’ll know each and every part of the largest, and most important, section.
Article I, which lays out the powers and restrictions of Congress, is massive. It comprises a full half of the written Constitution, and it’s the part the framers spent the most time debating. Today we’re going through the entire thing, section by section, with the inimitable Linda Monk, JD. Linda is a constitutional scholar and author of The Words We Live By, An Annotated Guide to the Constitution and The Bill of Rights: A User’s Guide.
Correction: In an earlier version of this episode, Nick said there would never be more than 34 senators up for election at once. However, if there were any special elections due to senators not finishing their term (which happens a lot) that would bring it above 34. Or if we had more states! Kudos to longtime listener Arturo Magidin who caught this mistake, and Nick regrets the error.
Transcript
C101_Article I.mp3
Nick Capodice: Hannah. Do you remember when this happened?
Khizr Khan: Donald Trump, you're asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution?
Hannah McCarthy: Oh yes, I do.
Nick Capodice: Do you want to tell everybody what we're listening to here?
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, I sure do. This was at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2016. And on stage, the father of a soldier [00:00:30] who was killed in the Iraq war pulled out a pocket constitution.
Khizr Khan: I will gladly lend you my copy.
Hannah McCarthy: And in a rare moment of everyone actually thinking about the Constitution, this moment went kind of viral.
Nick Capodice: So the speaker, Khizr Khan, was referencing the constitutionality of Donald Trump's proposed complete and total shutdown of all Muslims entering the United States. And [00:01:00] I'm bringing this up, Hannah, because at that time there was no Civics 101 podcast. And for me personally, you know, I'd read the Constitution a few times in my life at that point. I didn't have a tremendous grasp of it. And I'm wondering if there's anyone out there who's like me, you know, the Nick back in 2016, someone who cares about this country and cares about politics and has a pocket constitution, but, you [00:01:30] know, doesn't 100% know what exactly is in it and where, you know, but today, today we're gonna fix that. If you do not know what's in article one of the Constitution, by the end of this episode, you will I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: And from NPR, this is Civics 101. Stick around.
Hannah McCarthy: All right, so article one, Nick, [00:02:00] we're doing the whole thing.
Nick Capodice: The whole thing from stem to stern, from the crown to the toe. Top full. Hannah, I am not gonna recite all of article one to everyone out there, but I did want someone to walk us through it. I wanted someone who knew this thing cold.
Linda Monk: So when we're looking at the U.S. Constitution, written in 1787, we have to remember that this is a document in writing with words.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, Linda [00:02:30] Monk.
Nick Capodice: Linda Monk, JD, the Constitution. Lady Linda is a constitutional scholar. She has written many books on the Constitution, including the words We Live by. Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution and the Bill of rights, A User's Guide. And she started our little chat with telling me about how Americans wanted a physical, written in ink Constitution.
Linda Monk: The American people, pretty early on, actually, even back to 1641, [00:03:00] and the Massachusetts body of liberties wanted their rights written down. Wanted the government's powers written down. So unlike the United Kingdom, where they have a constitution that has different written documents that are part of it, it also has a body of kind of unwritten mores and values that they consider [00:03:30] their Constitution. But it's unwritten. And to Americans, that would be really unacceptable.
Nick Capodice: So that's how we got a written constitution, starting with a preamble and then article one, which is the beating heart of our government.
Linda Monk: One of the things we look at when we look at article one, which sets up the legislative branch, is that it is at least half of the written constitution.
Hannah McCarthy: Half of the written constitution half.
Nick Capodice: If you go down to the National [00:04:00] Archives in DC and you look at that original parchment.
Hannah McCarthy: Which is stretched dried animal hide, by the way, which I don't know why I didn't know until I was looking at the plaque next to it in Washington, DC.
Nick Capodice: Well, if you are at the archives looking at the actual Constitution, article one makes up two full pages and the whole Constitution is only four.
Linda Monk: Big part of that fourth page is the signatures. So especially when you take out the signatures and you look at articles one through [00:04:30] seven, what did they say? Article one with the legislative branch is well over half of the entire document. It's much larger than the executive branch, which is second, and then the judicial branch, which is third. So just looking at the the framers of the Constitution, people who actually wrote the document. And then when you look at the legislative history of it, too, It's very clear that they intended for Congress [00:05:00] to be the dominant branch. And Congress gets the most words and the most explicit powers.
Hannah McCarthy: You know, this is interesting because I think people think of the three branches as sometimes being equal, at least in theory, and they check each other equally. But you know, they're not. And it sounds like they were not intended to be.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Congress was the top dog in 1787. So let us get into [00:05:30] it. Article one comprises ten sections, and we're going to go through each one. And section one is so short it's the only one I'm going to read verbatim. Here it goes. Quote, all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.
Linda Monk: Section one sets the basic template of that. It Establishes the legislative branch and it even names that [00:06:00] legislative branch to be Congress. Well, now, was that a brand new term that they never heard before? No. Congress had been called Congress under the Articles of Confederation. It had even been called the Continental Congress during revolutionary times. So this idea that there's a legislative body that's really running things is an old idea. It goes back to England, when England had its civil [00:06:30] war 100 years previously to the American Revolution. And the big contention there is, is the king's power going to be absolute, or can Parliament, the legislative branch of England, have power? And in fact, today it's known as parliamentary supremacy. Parliament is supreme over the rest of the government.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Section one just says there's a thing called the Congress, and it's got a House and a Senate, and they have all the legislative [00:07:00] powers, meaning they make the laws.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Clean and simple. Sections two and three. I'm going to kind of mix them a little bit here. They lay out how the two chambers work respectively. Section two is the House of Representatives and section three is the Senate. And here's where we got to jump back a little bit and look at the debates that were going on when the Constitution was written.
Linda Monk: In the Constitutional Convention itself, held in Philadelphia. There were two major issues that [00:07:30] were at stake, and the resolution of those issues was going to determine whether the Constitution would actually be approved, both by the delegates there and later by the American people.
Nick Capodice: Now, let's remember at this point, there was a pre constitution, constitution called the Articles of Confederation, which is the framework that was set up during the American Revolution.
Linda Monk: The first was under the Articles of Confederation every state was equal, and like 13 quarreling. [00:08:00] Brothers and sisters, nobody wanted to give up any of their power. They wanted to all be equal in the. The new form of government. Now larger states like Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, um, weren't really keen on that idea because they thought, well, we have more people, we have, um, a greater population. And, and so it's only fair that our people get [00:08:30] more representation. So the resolution of that particular dispute was what's called the great compromise, where you had two houses in Congress.
Hannah McCarthy: And the great compromise was that the House has representatives from each state according to its population. A k a proportional representation. And with the Senate. You have senators representing the people, but it's two from each state.
Nick Capodice: And that the [00:09:00] tax liability is portioned out using the House model. That is, the amount that the federal government collects in taxes from people is directly tied to how many people live in your state. And then we run into a famous or rather infamous quandary.
Linda Monk: And the second compromise, which many Americans still today find abhorrent. But, um, it was the compromise that was made, rightly [00:09:30] or wrongly, was okay. When you count the population of these states, who are you going to count? Because they quickly agree. Well, we're going to count a lot of people that we would call citizens, but they don't vote. And that's white men without property. That's women, that's children. Children are still citizens even though they don't get to vote whole categories. And so the question then becomes, what about [00:10:00] enslaved people?
Hannah McCarthy: Southern states want to count enslaved people toward their populations, because that means they will have more representatives in the House.
Nick Capodice: Yes. And they do not want to count them when it comes to taxes, because the fewer people a state has, the lower their tax burden is.
Linda Monk: And here's a deep conflict. Irony that is difficult for modern Americans to understand is the [00:10:30] issue was, would enslaved people be counted as full persons for the purpose of both population and taxation, or would they not be counted as persons at all? Some northern states says, wait a minute. You say that enslaved people are your property. Well, then, if you're going to count your slaves for for representation, then we're going to count our horses and cows. That makes the same sense. The dilemma is, [00:11:00] is that if you count enslaved people fully 100%. Does that end slavery? No. And who does it give power to? It gives power to the very states that are holding people in bondage. So again, we think today about oh three versus 3/5 of a person, which was the compromise that came up. Okay. We're going to say 3/5 of all other [00:11:30] persons.
Hannah McCarthy: The 3/5 clause was in section two, but it was abolished upon the passage of the 14th amendment in 1868. Now, the 14th amendment, of course, granted birthright citizenship to people, meaning that if you were born here in this country, you were a citizen of this country.
Nick Capodice: Absolutely. But if you're looking at article one, as it stood when the Constitution was written. That was how it apportioned out representation and taxes. Representation being how [00:12:00] many people each state gets in the house. And if you read it, you will notice Hannah. They never even once used the word slavery. It just says a free person counts as one and everybody else counts as 3/5.
Linda Monk: You're free to disagree with it. But the rationale was we're not talking about ending slavery. We're not talking about ending slavery. We're talking about political representation and power.
Nick Capodice: So here is the formula, the mapping out of how many [00:12:30] representatives a state can get in the house. Quote, the number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000. End quote. The average member of the House in the 18th century represented about 25,000 people.
Hannah McCarthy: So right now there are 435 members of the House of Representatives, and that is where it is staying. Unless someone passes another act or law, because that's where the number was capped in 1929.
Nick Capodice: Yep.
Hannah McCarthy: Just out of curiosity, though, if they had not capped [00:13:00] it, Nick, where would we be right now? How many members of Congress would there be a lot.
Linda Monk: Today, a member of the House represents about 750 000 people, which is pretty phenomenal. I think using that original proportion, Congress would be somewhere around 5000 representatives.
Hannah McCarthy: 5000.
Nick Capodice: 5000. The House would need to be about 11 times bigger anyways. Section two also says that members [00:13:30] of the House serve for two years, that they have to be at least 25 years old. They have to live in the state that they represent, and they have to have been a citizen in the US for the last seven years. And finally, the last part of section two, we get to a power that the House has all to itself.
Linda Monk: The House has the ability to impeach. Impeach means charge. That means that there's a charge laid against them, and it's done in the House of Representatives. That's where it [00:14:00] has to begin. And this applies to officers, officials of the executive branch and of the judicial branch.
Hannah McCarthy: And to be clear, impeaching someone does not mean removing someone from office. Three presidents have been impeached so far, but so far none of them have been removed from office.
Nick Capodice: Yes, and we are going to get to that removal a little later in the next section, section three, which is all about the Senate. Two [00:14:30] senators from each state, they serve six year terms. And originally you did not used to have any say whatsoever in who your senator was. You didn't vote for him. Your state's legislature chose senators, no election at all. And, unsurprisingly, wealthy and powerful people usually got the job.
Linda Monk: Now, at one time in American history, the Senate was called the Millionaires Club because it was believed that state legislatures would just pick [00:15:00] a millionaire to. That was one of their benefits was to get the state legislature to put them in in the Senate. Um, there's other reasons. The Senate is called the Millionaires club still today in terms of net worth. What was changed is the 17th amendment then gave direct election of senators. So that's another one of those examples where the Constitution of 1787 was made more democratic [00:15:30] in the sense of the people. The everyday people who could vote were allowed to directly choose more and more of the offices.
Nick Capodice: Again, two senators from your state, no matter how big or how small it is. Next interesting thing about the Senate is their length of term. Now, Linda already mentioned that it's six years, but the Senate is on sort of a round robin rotation, so only one third of the Senate is up for election every [00:16:00] two years. Sort of maintaining a status quo like a this is how we do things around here kind of vibe.
Hannah McCarthy: Kind of like Theseus ship.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, I've had the same broom all my life. Just change the handle and the bristles. Oh. That's a good joke.
Linda Monk: And the Senate has the vice president. This is very unusual. You have in [00:16:30] the Constitution a member of two branches. The vice president is in the executive branch, but he's also considered the president or she is also considered the president of the Senate, which is a very influential job. And when the Congress is divided or the Senate is divided. The vice president can do tie break, make tie breaking votes. And that has happened repeatedly.
Hannah McCarthy: How repeatedly?
Nick Capodice: Well, as of right now, [00:17:00] July of 2026, ties in the Senate have been broken by the Veep 306 times. The vice president also tallies the electoral votes in presidential elections. And then we get to the nuts and bolts of who can serve as a senator just a tad more persnickety than the House. You have to be 30 years old, at least live in the state you represent and have been a US citizen for the last nine years. Now back to impeachment. The House starts it and the Senate [00:17:30] finishes the job.
Linda Monk: The Senate then tries the impeachments so the House makes its charges and the House will even act as prosecutors before the Senate. The Senate really acts as like the jury would in terms of um, having the vote of whether or not the person is guilty and should be removed from office. And that's not a simple majority vote. That's a two thirds vote. Uh, the House can impeach [00:18:00] by majority, but the Senate needs a two thirds vote to remove from office. And that's supposed to be whiz bang. Thank you, ma'am. We're done. We'll see how, um, since thus far, no president has been successfully removed from office, uh, how that would actually play out.
Nick Capodice: All right. How are we doing, Hannah?
Hannah McCarthy: I'm feeling good. And that's it for section three.
Nick Capodice: That's it. Only seven to go, and we're gonna get through [00:18:30] those right quick after a short break. You are listening to civics 101. We are talking about the Constitution. We're clogging through the entirety of article one piece by piece. Where were we before we stopped?
Hannah McCarthy: We were about to get to section four.
Nick Capodice: Section four. Okay. Here again is constitutional scholar Linda Monk.
Linda Monk: Section four is times, places [00:19:00] and manners of elections. What it says is that the times, places and manners of elections. And by the way, this is all federal elections, including House, Senate and the president um shall be done by the States.
Hannah McCarthy: States determine the how, where and when of elections they do.
Nick Capodice: This is how we have things like ranked choice voting in Maine and Alaska, for example. It is entirely up to the states.
Hannah McCarthy: Except, except.
Linda Monk: Except when [00:19:30] Congress wants to make those decisions. In my opinion, as a scholar, Congress should make some of those decisions to get us more uniform, and they absolutely have that power. But the states would still thus far administer the elections. And right now, until Congress makes other provisions, state standards about when you count votes and how you count votes, etc., varies from state [00:20:00] to state. And there have been some challenges of that.
Hannah McCarthy: So this is why there are often differences in how different states handle various elements of the voting process. Different rules for mail in ballots, different timelines for counting votes, different rules for absentee voting.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Or which states allow same day registration and which ones don't.
Linda Monk: And thus far they've been those variations among states have been upheld. But there's [00:20:30] big movement certainly within the current administration to change that.
Nick Capodice: All right. On to section five. Section five is all about procedure in the House and the Senate. How stuff works operationally. And that includes Meeting people after elections. As in, you know, they won the election, they're now a senator or they're now a member of the House of Representatives. You've got the job, kid. Now, this section can read like a little bit of administrative housekeeping, but the first line is [00:21:00] an important one. Quote, each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, end quote. And this this is where things can get a little tricky, because what that is saying is if the House decides they don't want to seat a newly elected representative, they don't have to.
Linda Monk: It's happened before it happened, um, around reconstruction when suddenly the the former Confederates, [00:21:30] including Confederate generals, were pardoned very quickly by President Andrew Johnson. We're having elections. Wanted to be seated back in the Senate and the House and the Republican majority at that point. Now people call them quote unquote, radical Republicans, but they were the ruling majority at that time said, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're not going to have people that were just trying to kill us two years ago and get rid of Congress [00:22:00] to suddenly, okay, we we forgot come on back, you know. And so the Reconstruction Congress used this provision, section five, to say, wait a minute. We don't acknowledge these elections. And they refused to seat these neo-confederates. And there weren't even neo-confederates. They were just Confederates still in their eyes. They had taken an oath of loyalty to the government as part of their [00:22:30] pardon. But guess what? They had an oath of loyalty as military people if they were in the United States Army before. So we already know they've broken one oath.
Nick Capodice: This happened again during the Civil rights movement. A black legislator named Adam Clayton Powell was accused of mismanaging his campaign funds. So the House majority refused to seat him.
Speaker 7: Adam Clayton Powell was having some work done in a dentist chair today. When he got the news. The Supreme Court had agreed to hear his case and [00:23:00] agreed to decide if Congress had the power to keep him out of his seat. Congress generally feels it is totally sovereign in these matters, and that the courts have no right to ask any questions or give any opinions.
Nick Capodice: There was a whole tangle of a back and forth, and it eventually ended in Powell winning a special election to fill his own vacant seat. All this to say, Hannah, in the words of Battlestar Galactica. All this has happened before, and it could happen [00:23:30] again.
Speaker 8: It's not exactly what they say in Battlestar Galactica.
Hannah McCarthy: So say we.
Nick Capodice: All. What do they say in the Battlestar?
Hannah McCarthy: All of this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
Speaker 9: So say we all. Where's my Cylon detector?
Hannah McCarthy: You need to watch Battlestar Galactica again.
Linda Monk: But it just goes to show that at a time when the validity of elections are being challenged, right or wrong, when you create enough public doubt about what's happening, who gets to [00:24:00] decide? And in the case of the House and the Senate, it's the House and the Senate. And, um, one of the questions is, in this particular climate, who gets to decide the majority that's already in power gets to decide, oh, well, you new people that are coming in, we're just not going to see you. We're not going to have a what what would it be now, the 108th Congress or 112th Congress, whatever the number is, that [00:24:30] kind of possibility for stalemate. So we're living in a time where the stress tests, as they say, on the US Constitution, are phenomenal. And in my experience as a constitutional scholar, when that happens, it's really the people that make the ultimate decision.
Nick Capodice: Last thing about section five, and it's a big one. It's that the House and the Senate make their own rules.
Linda Monk: Section [00:25:00] five also says that the House and the Senate, in addition to determining the outcomes of elections, makes its own rules and procedures. And when it comes down to what piece of legislation won and by how many votes, and is a regular majority required or a supermajority required, that's where those rules come into play.
Hannah McCarthy: For example, the House could say, we only vote on Wednesdays and everyone has to wear a special little [00:25:30] hat. Or to get real for a second, the Senate could get rid of the filibuster anytime they want.
Nick Capodice: Anytime they want it. Hannah, are you ready for section six?
Hannah McCarthy: I think I am.
Nick Capodice: All right. All right, let's talk about making money.
Linda Monk: Section six is an interesting one because it says, okay, we're going to, you know, we're going to pay the the House and the Senate and they should get some compensation. Now, remember when the Constitution was written, the [00:26:00] idea was that the noble classes, you know, they wouldn't call themselves nobility, but they definitely believed in noblesse oblige, meaning that the people to whom much is given much is required. It's supposed to be like a civic duty. So you're not going to Congress to get paid a lot of money? Well, they'll have a compensation, but it has to be determined by law.
Nick Capodice: In other words, section six says members of Congress [00:26:30] get paid, but it doesn't say how much.
Hannah McCarthy: Right. Their salary has to be written into a bill and passed like any other law. Right now, for example, a senator makes $174,000 a year.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, that is more than twice the median American household income, but admittedly, they haven't gotten a raise since 2009. Because voting to raise your salary when you're not very popular is not very popular.
Linda Monk: And one of the other interesting updates is that [00:27:00] in the Bill of rights, as originally proposed, there were 12 amendments. And the Second Amendment in that version was one that said Congress couldn't have a pay raise until the people got a chance to fire them through another election. That's now become the 27th amendment.
Hannah McCarthy: Right. The 27th amendment was ratified in 1992 and is our most recent amendment, but it was actually one of the original 12 proposed in 1789.
Nick Capodice: What's interesting to me about this is that if you look at the state [00:27:30] votes for ratification for the 27th amendment, the most recent ones were in 1992. But some states go back to 1789.
Hannah McCarthy: Those 200 year old votes were still legitimate.
Nick Capodice: Still legit for this amendment.
Linda Monk: The archivist of the of the of the United States said, well, you know, the Supreme Court has said we really need to have contemporaneous ratification, but we're going to let this one pass. Not the ERA, but we'll let this one pass. You [00:28:00] can edit that out if you want to.
Speaker 10: He didn't.
Linda Monk: The other provision of section six that's really important is not only shall Congress get paid, but when can they be punished, because it was not uncommon under, uh, English circumstances, whether by the king or or elsewhere, that members of the Parliament would [00:28:30] be arrested on the floor of the Parliament to keep them from voting. You know what section six says is no. While you're on the floor of the Congress. You cannot be arrested except for felony treason. It has to be a big deal. It can't just be. Oh, you know, we saw him driving too fast on the way to the Capitol. So we got this. You got to come down and be be arraigned. No, that's not supposed to happen. And [00:29:00] the other big, important thing is that they can't be punished for anything based on the speech or debate in the Congress.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, okay. This is the speech or debate clause, right?
Nick Capodice: This protects members of Congress from someone in the executive branch, like, say, the president, demanding that they be arrested.
Linda Monk: And finally, the interesting thing in this section is that if [00:29:30] you're a member of Congress, you're not supposed to also have a job in the executive department. You have to resign from Congress to then be in the executive department.
Hannah McCarthy: So a senator cannot be the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Nick Capodice: No they cannot. You gotta keep them separated. All right. Only a few remain. We're gonna come back after a quick break.
Hannah McCarthy: You're [00:30:00] listening to civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: And we are tearing through article one at a pretty good clip, I would say. And we are at section seven.
Nick Capodice: This is the section that lays out how a bill becomes a law. Like the thing we know about the legislative branch, that they write the bills and those bills go through a fantastic process that we don't have time to summarize here. And they eventually land on the president's desk to be signed into law or not.
Linda Monk: So the legislative power is predominantly [00:30:30] Congress. But guess what? The president gets to veto if he disapproves legislation.
Nick Capodice: You want to give us a quick veto summary?
Hannah McCarthy: Hannah I do. If a president does not like a bill that is passed in both chambers for any number of reasons, usually political, they can veto it. And that bill does not become law. Then if two thirds of both chambers say, actually, we really want this, they can [00:31:00] override that presidential veto. And then that bill does become law without the president's signature.
Nick Capodice: And also, if the president doesn't officially veto a bill but just refuses to sign it, it becomes law ten days after it reaches the president's desk. Which Hannah recently was explained to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo by GOP rep French Hill. And maybe one of the only times our show was unintentionally name dropped by a member of Congress.
Archival: He may sign [00:31:30] it, he may veto it, or ten days after it's transmitted to the white House, it becomes law without his signature.
Archival: There you go. That's it. Okay. Congressman good to see you this morning. Thank you.
Archival: Civics 101 Maria.
Archival: Thank you for that education. Mr. chairman.
Hannah McCarthy: We finally made it. Nick. Just like when a musician gets invited to be on Sesame Street.
Nick Capodice: But now there's this other thing called a pocket veto, which is if a president refuses to sign a bill. But before [00:32:00] those ten days pass, Congress adjourns. That bill is vetoed, in essence, without anybody doing anything. Another thing in section seven is that the House and only the House can write certain laws.
Hannah McCarthy: The power of the purse.
Nick Capodice: Write any bills about taxing and spending must start in the House. The People's Chamber. That said, there are some workarounds to this. It's not hard for someone in the Senate to [00:32:30] say to their buddy in the House, hey, I want you to write this tax bill or another workaround. Money can be appropriated by other people, specifically the president, if it's tied to a quote unquote, national emergency.
Hannah McCarthy: Do you happen to know how many national emergencies have been declared over our history?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, since we started declaring them in 1976, there have been 90 emergencies, 51 of which are still in effect, and 11 of those have been declared during [00:33:00] Trump's second term. All right, we're on to section eight. And this is a big one.
Linda Monk: Then section eight is what I call the laundry list of the Constitution. It's where most of Congress's powers are set out. The kinds of things you wanted the Congress to be able to do, that it really couldn't do under the Articles of Confederation, like tax, borrow money, raise an army, create a uniform rule of [00:33:30] naturalization, provide for punishment of counterfeit coins, to coin money to regulate its value. And that's a pretty big power to say that a nickel doesn't mean what a nickel used to be. Establishing post office and roads. That was Benjamin Franklin's great gift to the country. Copyright and patent protect those rights so that people would be able to enjoy the benefits of their creative work. Create tribunals under [00:34:00] the Supreme Court also to declare war. This is another shared power. Congress declares war, but the president's the commander in chief raise and support armies. That becomes a big deal in terms of whether or not to have a standing army, a permanent army. Provide and maintain a navy, provide for the common. The calling forth of a militia. And right at the beginning of that list is to regulate commerce with foreign nations. That's [00:34:30] international commerce. And among the several states, that's interstate commerce that's probably become the largest source of federal power.
Nick Capodice: Hannah, this is what surprised me most, talking to Linda, that interstate commerce has become the biggest source of federal power. And this tiny chunk of section eight called the Commerce Clause. It's only 16 words, but its effect is tremendous. [00:35:00]
Linda Monk: Multiple civil rights laws were in fact not passed under the 14th amendment, but under interstate commerce. So the the public accommodations laws that says that a person of any color can stay anywhere, that the business is open to the public or can eat in a restaurant where it is open to the public that comes out of interstate commerce. Because what happens, um, African American people encountered this of there weren't [00:35:30] safe places that would allow them to sleep with an integrated population. So they had to create the Green book, a special directory. This hampers the movement of people and ideas and products that a vital economy needs. That segregation is a bad idea for so many reasons, and fundamentally, it hurts the economic, enterprise and ability to compete of the American people because [00:36:00] the best people aren't able to offer the best products.
Hannah McCarthy: And interstate commerce is also tied to things like gun ownership, cannabis possession, etc..
Nick Capodice: It's tied to so much stuff. If you sell something on eBay, if you drive across the state line for work, any transaction that goes from one state to another falls under interstate commerce, and it's under the purview of Congress. So that's huge. And while we're here in section eight, the very last item in [00:36:30] the laundry list is this quote to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.
Hannah McCarthy: Necessary and proper. Always struck me as a little bit vague.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, it's a little vague, Hannah. And this clause, also called the elastic clause, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to say, hey, this laundry list here, that's not everything Congress does. Their powers might stretch as an elastic band, might around [00:37:00] a whole bunch of other stuff.
Hannah McCarthy: Till it snaps. Makes me wonder exactly how stretchy we want that elastic band to get.
Nick Capodice: Absolutely. And I'm going to leave that for our listeners to decide. All right. We are coming to the close here, sections nine and ten. I like these, Hannah, because the first eight were a bunch of do's. Don't do what Donnie don't does.
Linda Monk: Section nine is what I call the don'ts of Congress. These are the very explicit [00:37:30] things that it says flat out Congress. You do not have the power to do this. And I tragically, ironically, first thing off the boat, so to speak, is Congress did not have the power to ban the slave trade until 1808, which it did in 1808. But remember, that doesn't end slavery either, because what it creates is a domestic market for the children [00:38:00] of enslaved people to be perpetually sold and resold in bondage in the United States.
Nick Capodice: All right, moving along. Here is another crucial bit of section nine.
Linda Monk: We have the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, which Congress cannot suspend except in times of rebellion or invasion. Principle of habeas [00:38:30] corpus is that if the government puts you in jail, they have to, within a reasonable time, tell you why you're there and not just throw away the key.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, so let's say you've got a family member. You think this family member has been arrested, but you cannot get in touch with her. You have a right to be told what is going on.
Nick Capodice: Correct. You get a writ of habeas corpus from a judge and then.
Linda Monk: The prosecutor, the government, the jailer has to say, yes, we have her. And by [00:39:00] the way, here's what we're holding her for. We've talked about people who are disappeared under certain governments because you have no idea where they're being held, if they're alive, if they're dead, what they're being held for and can die or rot in prison. And now, under expanded powers for Ice in the US about immigration procedures, it's a similar issue of of people are saying, wait a minute. They took my my husband, [00:39:30] my wife, my loved one, my father, my child, and I have no idea where they are or if they're still alive or dead. And so this writ of habeas corpus is supposed to say that if you're representing the United States of America, you have to respond to this. And we're seeing it put into implementation, not always successfully, but at least being raised today.
Nick Capodice: Habeas corpus [00:40:00] is an extremely important don't in section nine. But there are a few more no bills of attainder, meaning you can't pass legislation designed to hurt a particular person. Also, no corruption of blood, which means people can't inherit assets from someone who is convicted of treason.
Linda Monk: The big one that I think is still important is no titles of nobility, because we the people are equal, as I say. Thank you very much.
Nick Capodice: And [00:40:30] the very last section in article one shortly, but a goodie. Section ten.
Linda Monk: Section ten. No state shall enter into any treaty or alliance. Different states wanted to receive the Minister of France, who doesn't want to receive the Minister of France. Right. And and setting all these diplomatic difficulties.
Nick Capodice: So basically, during the Articles of Confederation, all the states were getting a little too big for their britches, you know, acting like their [00:41:00] own little federal government, if you please.
Linda Monk: And that's why we needed section ten of article one to say no. States, you may think you're sovereign, but you're not a sovereign nation. You have certain sovereignty within your sphere under the US Constitution, but you're not an international sovereign and stop acting like it. And particularly regarding interstate commerce, you got to stop this business of trying [00:41:30] to put taxes and duties on other states to give yourself an advantage. New York, you can't tax New Jersey's goods. New Jersey you can't tax New York's goods. You can't do that. We're all going to live together now under a constitution. And that means they're going to be things that individual states are not going to like all the time. But we've already gone through a period where the states had maximum say so and look what [00:42:00] happened. So here we are. Did that work?
Nick Capodice: Did that work?
Hannah McCarthy: Oh that worked.
Nick Capodice: You wouldn't be able to run it all back for me, would you?
Hannah McCarthy: You want to just record this episode all over again? It's an endless loop for the listener.
Nick Capodice: Well, I mean, like, the tiniest little song.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, you really want me to do it? Okay. Okay, great. Article one is the longest part of the Constitution, and it says there will be a legislative [00:42:30] branch, it is called Congress. It then tells us how the House of Representatives is set up, how the Senate is set up, how elections work for members of Congress, how procedure works in both chambers, how representatives and senators are paid for their jobs, how bills become laws, and that specifically spending bills have to start in the House. And then it is a laundry list of what Congress does, what they cannot do, [00:43:00] and finally, what the states cannot do.
Nick Capodice: That was pretty great. Thank you. How am I gonna end this episode?
Hannah McCarthy: You know, Nick, there are other articles in the Constitution.
Nick Capodice: Seven like the Seven Kingdoms.
Hannah McCarthy: Seven total. We got one down. Do your job.
Nick Capodice: Well, that is not it for the Constitution, but that's it for article one. Huge thanks to Linda Monk. If you want to learn more about her and her work, visit her [00:43:30] website, lynda.com. This episode is made by me Nick Capodice with you, Hannah McCarthy.
Hannah McCarthy: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Nick Capodice: Our staff includes Taylor Quimby, Rebecca Lavoie, Dana Cataldo, and Marina Henke. Music in this episode from blue Dot sessions. Epidemic sound and the genuine article Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
Speaker 13: So [00:44:00] say we all.
Speaker 9: So say we all. Where's my Cylon detector?
Hannah McCarthy: You need to watch Battlestar Galactica again.
Nick Capodice: I know every.
Hannah McCarthy: Where's my Cylon detector? Saul doesn't say.
Nick Capodice: That. That was my Adama impression. He punches, he punches.
Speaker 14: I thought it was.
Speaker 9: If I was doing Saul Tigh, I'd sound like that.
Nick Capodice: Here's my Adama. He punches him in the stomach and he goes.
Speaker 9: Where's my Cylon detector? But Saul Tigh is like these frakking toasters.