Name: The US Constitution
Uploaded: 2017-10-19T18:34:24.000Z
Duration: 9 min 23 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Teacher] In the last video we discussed the great

compromise made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787,

where delegates who were trying to craft a new

governmental system for the United States agreed on how

the legislative branch of the government would be set up,

and the agreement they made was that it would be a two house

or bicameral legislature with a House of Representatives,

where the representatives would be apportioned

based on state population, and then a Senate where

every state would get two senators regardless of its size.

This is just one example of how the framers

of the constitution tried to introduce a notion of balance.

In this video, I wanna zoom out a little bit and look at

the broader constitution, because the legislative branch

In fact, there are seven more articles of the constitution.

So here, I'd like to spend some time taking a closer look

at some of the other articles, paying special attention

to the executive branch and the judicial branch,

but before we do that, I just want to take a moment

to marvel at the size of the constitution.

Not because it's so big, but because it's so small.

This is the first page of the constitution,

famously starting with, "We the people," but the entire

original constitution could fit on four pages.

Compare that to the constitutions of many other nations

and I think the idea here in having a constitution

was that it was gonna set down principles.

This wasn't going to be a whole set of laws that outlined

everything that a state should do in any situation

but rather a set of broad ideas around which

In a way, you could think of the constitution

as being kind of broad enough to be flexible.

They spoke in larger generalities that could be

and I think the proof that this was a good way to think

about putting together a constitution is just in the fact

that we'd still have this constitution today,

more than 200 years after it was written in 1787.

The US Constitution is the oldest constitution in the world

that is still in effect at the national level.

Well, let's look a little bit more closely at these first

three articles and the branches of government they created.

One of the ways that the framers of the constitution

attempted to remedy the problems caused by the single branch

government under the Articles of Confederation

would be the Congress and within this building

is the House of Representatives and the Senate.

And this would be in the eyes of the framers,

really the most powerful of the branches.

They gave Congress the power to make law,

They really envisioned that most of the day to day

operations and most of the power of government

but one thing that the Articles of Confederation

established in Article 2 is the executive branch,

The job of the executive would be to enforce

and that would include doing things like waging war.

Remember that the first president was George Washington,

who had been the General of the Revolutionary Armies,

but the president could also kind of have the front lines

on dealing with foreign nations, so negotiating treaties,

And lastly, the third branch would be the judicial branch

The head of the judicial branch would be the Supreme Court,

Of course, there are many other smaller courts

below it at the state and district level.

The Supreme Court's job, along with other courts,

would be to interpret the law, to see whether or not

things done by Congress and the president

fell within the bounds of the constitution.

And the framers really thought that the judicial branch

would end up being the weakest branch of government,

although both the presidency and the Supreme Court

Now, this is an incredibly brief overview

about the specific powers of each of these branches

and the kinds of requirements one would need

so I highly recommend that you read more about

the Constitution and check out these articles.

But what I want you to get out of this is that the framers

here were trying to separate the powers of government,