Three Branches, and How Each Checks the Others

How the Constitution is laid out

The Constitution of the United States is the plan for the national government. It says what the government is made of, what each part may do, and what no part of it may do. It was written in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 (Chapter 3 tells that story), approved by the states in 1788 (Chapter 4), and it went into effect in 1789. It is still in force today.

The original Constitution is short. You could read the whole thing aloud in about half an hour. It has three kinds of pieces, and it helps to know them before you read any of it:

• The Preamble. One long sentence at the very beginning. It says who is making the Constitution and why.
• Seven articles. An article is a numbered main section of a document. The seven articles are the body of the Constitution. They set up the government.
• Twenty-seven amendments. An amendment is a formal change or addition to the Constitution. The amendments were added after 1789, one at a time, and they come after the seven articles. The first ten are called the Bill of Rights (Chapter 7). All twenty-seven are explained on the page All the Amendments.

How the parts are numbered

The articles are numbered with Roman numerals, the old system of numbers that uses letters. You need only the first seven: I is 1, II is 2, III is 3, IV is 4, V is 5, VI is 6, and VII is 7.

Most articles are divided again into sections, which are numbered with ordinary numbers. A section may hold several clauses. A clause is one sentence, or one part of a sentence, that makes a single rule. So when a book or a test question says "Article I, Section 8," it means the first article, eighth section. You will see that address many times in this chapter. It is the list of the powers of Congress.

The Preamble

Here is the Preamble, word for word. It keeps the spelling and the capital letters of 1787. In those days writers often put a capital letter at the start of an important noun. The capitals do not change the meaning.

In plain words: We, the people of the United States, are setting up this Constitution for our country. We are doing it for six reasons, listed in the middle of the sentence. Ordain and establish means to set up officially. Posterity means the generations who come after us: our children, and their children.

Look at the first three words: "We the People." Compare them with the Articles of Confederation in Chapter 2, which described the states entering "a firm league of friendship with each other." The Articles were an agreement among states. The Constitution says it is made by the people. That is the idea of popular sovereignty from Chapter 1: the government's power comes from the people. (Who counted as one of "the People" in 1787 is a different question. Many people, including enslaved people, women, and Native nations, had no voice in making it. Chapters 3, 8, and 10 return to this.)

The Preamble names six goals. It does not give the government any power by itself. The powers come later, in the articles. The Preamble tells you what the powers are for.

The seven articles

The first three articles create the three branches of the national government, one article for each. Congress comes first. Many of the founders believed the law-making branch, the one closest to the voters, was the most important, and Article I is by far the longest article. The other four articles deal with the states, with changing the Constitution, with the Constitution's place above other laws, and with how the Constitution itself would be approved.

A way to remember the first three: the order of the articles follows the life of a law. First Congress makes it (Article I). Then the president carries it out (Article II). Then, if there is a dispute about it, the courts decide what it means (Article III).

Drills for this part: II.11 Find it in the Constitution: the Preamble and the seven articles. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

How to read a clause of the Constitution

The GED test often shows you a clause of the Constitution and asks what it means, or which branch it is about, or what it allows. The English of 1787 can look hard at first. The sentences are long, the capital letters are in unexpected places, and some words are old. But the Constitution was written to be read by ordinary citizens, and almost every clause can be understood if you read it slowly and ask the same few questions each time.

A method in four steps

1. Find the who. Who is this clause about? Congress? The House? The Senate? The president? The courts? The states? A person who wants an office? Underline it.
2. Find the action word, and notice how strong it is. The Constitution uses three kinds of action words, and they mean very different things:
   • "shall" means must. It is a command. "The President shall be Commander in Chief" means the president is commander in chief, with no choice about it.
   • "may" means is allowed to, but does not have to.
   • "shall not" or "No ... shall" means is forbidden. "No Person shall be a Representative who ..." sets out who is not allowed to serve.
3. Find the limits. Look for the small words that add a condition or an exception: but, unless, except, provided, by and with. These words often carry the most important part of the clause, because they say when the rule does not apply, or who else must agree.
4. Say it back in one plain sentence. Put the who, the action, and the limit together in your own words. If you can say it to a friend, you understood it.

Old words and what they mean

These are words you will meet in the clauses on this page and on the test. Some are old spellings. Some are ordinary words used in an older way.

One more thing to know. The Constitution says "he" when it speaks of the president or of a member of Congress. In 1787 the writers expected those officials to be men. Today the words are understood to include anyone who meets the requirements, and women serve in Congress and on the Supreme Court.

Five clauses, read slowly

Here are five real clauses. For each one, we follow the four steps.

Example 1. The first sentence of Article I.

Who: Congress. Action: "shall be vested," which means the powers must be placed in Congress's hands. Limit: the words "herein granted." Congress gets the law-making powers that are given in this document, not every power anyone could imagine. In plain words: All the law-making powers that this Constitution gives to the national government belong to Congress, and Congress is made of two parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives. (Legislative means having to do with making laws.)

Example 2. Who may serve in the House.

Who: a person who wants to be a member of the House of Representatives. Action: "No Person shall be," which forbids. The sentence lists who may not serve, so you have to turn it around to find who may. Limits: three of them, joined by "and." In plain words: To serve in the House, you must be at least 25 years old, have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and live in the state you represent when you are elected. (Attained to the Age of means reached the age of. An inhabitant is a person who lives in a place.)

Notice what the clause does not say. It does not say you must live in the particular district you represent, only in the state. And it does not say you must be born in the United States. A naturalized citizen, someone who became a citizen after being born elsewhere, may serve in the House after seven years of citizenship.

Example 3. Where tax bills begin.

Who: the House and the Senate. Action: bills for raising money "shall originate" in the House: they must start there. Limit: the word "but." The Senate "may" propose changes or agree to them, as it does with any other bill. In plain words: Any bill that raises taxes must start in the House of Representatives. The Senate can still change it or agree to it. (A bill is a proposed law. Amendments here means changes to a bill, not amendments to the Constitution.)

Why the House? In 1787 the House was the only part of the national government elected directly by the voters. The founders remembered "no taxation without representation." They wanted the power to tax to start with the people's closest representatives.

Example 4. Treaties.

Who: "He" is the president, because this is Article II. Action: "shall have Power ... to make Treaties." A treaty is a formal agreement between countries. Limits: two of them. First, "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate": the Senate must approve. Second, "provided two thirds of the Senators present concur": two out of every three senators in the room must agree. In plain words: The president can make treaties with other countries, but a treaty counts only if two-thirds of the senators present vote to approve it.

This is a good example of why the limits matter most. If you read only "He shall have Power ... to make Treaties," you would think the president can make treaties alone. The limit words change the whole meaning.

Example 5. Judges.

Who: the courts, Congress, and judges. Actions: the judicial power "shall be vested" in one Supreme Court, which must exist. Congress "may" create lower courts, which it is allowed to do but not required to. Judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." In plain words: The power to decide cases under national law belongs to one Supreme Court and to any lower courts that Congress decides to set up. Federal judges keep their jobs as long as they behave properly, which in practice means for life. (Judicial means having to do with courts and judges.)

Notice the difference between "shall" and "may" in the same sentence. The Constitution requires a Supreme Court. It only allows lower courts. Every lower federal court in the country exists because Congress chose to create it.

Drills for this part: II.12 Read a clause: what does it say in plain words?. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

Separation of powers: three branches

In Chapter 1 you met the French writer Montesquieu. In 1748 he argued that liberty is safest when the powers of government are divided: one group makes the laws, another carries them out, and a third judges cases. If one person or one group holds all three, there can be no liberty. This idea is called the separation of powers.

In Chapter 2 you saw that the Articles of Confederation had only one branch, Congress, with no president and no national courts. The writers of the Constitution set out to fix that, and they used Montesquieu's idea to do it. A branch of government is one of its main parts, with its own job and its own people. The Constitution creates three.

James Madison, one of the main writers of the Constitution, explained why this mattered in one of the Federalist Papers, a series of newspaper essays written in 1787 and 1788 to persuade New Yorkers to approve the Constitution (Chapter 4).

In plain words: When the power to make laws, the power to carry them out, and the power to judge are all gathered into the same hands, that is tyranny. It does not matter whether those hands belong to one person, a small group, or a large group, or whether those people got their power by birth, by taking it for themselves, or by being elected. (Accumulation means gathering together. Hereditary means passed down from parent to child. Self-appointed means chosen by oneself. Elective means chosen by voters. Tyranny means cruel and unfair rule by someone with too much power.)

Notice the words "or many" and "elective." Madison is saying that even a large group, even an elected one, should not hold all three powers. A majority with unlimited power could also be a tyrant.

The three jobs in everyday life

The three jobs can be hard to picture. They become clearer when you follow one law through all three branches.

The same three jobs exist at every level of government, not only in Washington. New York State and New York City are each divided the same way.

A warning about one name. In New York State, the court called the "Supreme Court" is not the highest court. It is a trial court, where cases begin. New York's highest court is the Court of Appeals, which meets in Albany. In the national government, the Supreme Court really is the highest court. When a test question says "the Supreme Court" with no other word, it means the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

Here are some everyday examples. Try to name the branch before you read the answer.

• The City Council votes to require employers in the city to give workers paid sick days. Legislative: the council is making a law.
• A sanitation worker writes a ticket to a building owner who left trash out on the wrong day. Executive: the worker is enforcing a law that already exists.
• A judge in Brooklyn Housing Court decides whether a landlord may evict a tenant. Judicial: the judge is deciding a dispute under the law.
• The president orders a federal agency to change how it handles applications. Executive: the head of the executive branch is directing how laws are carried out.
• Congress votes to raise the tax on cigarettes. Legislative.
• The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a state law violates the Constitution. Judicial.
• A police officer arrests someone suspected of a crime. Executive. (Many people guess "judicial" because the police are connected with crime and courts. But the police are part of the mayor's administration. They enforce the law. The court decides afterward whether the person is guilty.)

Separated, but not sealed off

The founders did not separate the branches completely. Each branch has its own main job, but each also has a small part in the jobs of the others. The president takes part in law-making by signing or vetoing bills. The Senate takes part in carrying out the laws by approving the president's choices for high offices. The courts can decide that a law Congress passed is not valid. These overlapping pieces are called checks and balances, and Part 9 lays them all out. First, Parts 4 through 8 look at each branch closely.

Drills for this part: II.13 Which branch?. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

Congress: the House and the Senate

Congress is the legislative branch, the branch that makes the national laws. It meets in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. A legislature with two houses, or chambers, is called bicameral ("bi" means two; "camera" is an old word for a room or chamber). Congress has two: the House of Representatives and the Senate. A bill must pass both of them, in exactly the same words, before it can become a law.

Why two houses? At the Constitutional Convention, the large states wanted representation based on population, and the small states wanted every state to count equally. The Great Compromise gave each side one house: in the House, states with more people get more seats; in the Senate, every state gets two seats. Chapter 3 tells that story. Here we look at how the two houses work.

The House and the Senate, side by side

The founders meant the two houses to be different on purpose. The House, with short terms and members elected from small districts, was meant to stay close to what the voters want right now. The Senate, with longer terms, older members, and (at first) members chosen by state legislatures rather than by voters, was meant to be slower and steadier. The Senate was meant to give a second, cooler look to what the House passed in a moment of strong feeling.

New York's seats in the House

Because House seats follow population, a state can gain or lose seats after each census. After the 2020 census, New York lost one seat, going from 27 to 26. New York now has 26 members of the House, one for each of its 26 congressional districts. The five boroughs of New York City are divided among several of those districts. Each district has roughly 760,000 people. New York, like every state, has two senators.

The total number of voting House members has been fixed at 435 by a law Congress passed in 1929. It is not in the Constitution. Congress could change it by passing another law.

One part of how seats were first counted is important to know, and Chapter 3 explains it in full. The original Article I, Section 2 counted an enslaved person as three-fifths of a person when deciding how many seats a state got. This gave the slaveholding states more power in the House, even though the enslaved people themselves could not vote. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) ended that rule (All the Amendments).

Some powers of Congress

Article I, Section 8 is the list of the powers of Congress. The powers that are named in the Constitution are called enumerated powers (enumerated means listed, counted out one by one). Here are the most important, in plain words. Compare this list with the table in Chapter 2 of what Congress could not do under the Articles.

In plain words: Congress has the power to set and collect taxes, to pay the country's debts, defend it, and provide for the well-being of the people. (Duties and imposts are taxes on goods brought into the country. Excises are taxes on particular goods made or sold, such as gasoline or cigarettes.)

The "necessary and proper" clause

The last power in Section 8 is different from the others. It does not name a particular thing Congress may do. It lets Congress pass the laws it needs in order to use its other powers.

In plain words: Congress may make any law that is needed and suitable for carrying out the powers listed above, and the other powers this Constitution gives to the national government. (Carrying into Execution means putting into action. Foregoing means the ones that came before.)

For example, the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise an army. It does not say anything about military bases or training schools. Congress can set those up because they are "necessary and proper" for raising an army. Because this clause lets the powers of Congress stretch to fit new needs, it is often called the elastic clause. How far it should stretch has been argued over since the 1790s, and the Supreme Court's most famous answer came in the case McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Chapter 6 takes this up, along with the question of which powers belong to the nation and which to the states.

What Congress may not do

Article I, Section 9 lists things Congress may not do. One of them protects a very old right:

In plain words: The government may not take away a prisoner's right to be brought before a judge, who decides whether the prisoner is being held lawfully, except during a rebellion or an invasion when public safety requires it. (A writ of habeas corpus is a court order to bring a prisoner before a judge. Suspended means stopped for a time.)

Section 9 also says Congress may not pass a law that punishes a person without a trial, may not punish people for something that was legal when they did it, and may not grant titles of nobility such as "lord" or "duke." And in the same section, one clause protected the slave trade: Congress could not ban the bringing of enslaved Africans into the country before 1808. In 1807 Congress passed a ban that took effect on January 1, 1808, the first day the Constitution allowed. Slavery itself continued, and so did the buying and selling of enslaved people inside the country. Chapter 3 explains how that bargain was made.

Drills for this part: II.17 House or Senate?. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

How a bill becomes a law

A bill is a proposed law. Thousands of bills are introduced in every two-year session of Congress, and only a small share of them become law. The path is long on purpose. A bill must get through both houses and past the president, and at each step it can be changed, delayed, or stopped. Here are the steps in order. The drawing after the steps shows the same path.

The steps, in order

Step 1. The bill is introduced. An idea for a law can come from anyone: a citizen, a union, a business, a city government, or the president. But only a member of Congress can introduce a bill. In the House, a member drops the written bill into a wooden box called the hopper. In the Senate, a senator introduces it on the floor. The bill gets a number: bills that start in the House begin with "H.R.," and bills that start in the Senate begin with "S." A bill can start in either house, except that a bill for raising taxes must start in the House.

Step 2. Committee. The bill is sent to a committee, a small group of members who specialize in one subject, such as agriculture, the armed forces, or education. The committee, or a smaller subcommittee, may hold hearings, meetings where experts and members of the public give their views. Then the committee may change the bill and vote on it. Most bills never get past this step. If the committee does nothing, the bill simply dies. People say it "died in committee."

Step 3. A vote on the floor. If the committee approves the bill, it goes to the full house, which is called "the floor." Members debate it, may vote on changes, and then vote on the bill itself. To pass, it needs a majority of those voting: more than half.

The Senate has one extra hurdle that is not in the Constitution. It is a Senate rule. Senators may keep debating a bill as long as they wish, which can stop a vote from ever happening. Using long debate to block a vote is called a filibuster. To end debate, the Senate must vote for cloture (the end of debate), and on most bills that takes 60 of the 100 senators. So in practice, many bills need 60 votes in the Senate, not 51.

Step 4. The other house. A bill that passes one house goes to the other, where steps 2 and 3 happen all over again: committee, then a floor vote.

Step 5. Both houses agree on the same words. Often the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill. Before the bill can go to the president, both houses must pass exactly the same text. Sometimes one house simply accepts the other's version. Sometimes members from both houses meet in a conference committee to work out one version, which then goes back to both houses for a final vote.

Step 6. The president. The bill now goes to the president, who has ten days, not counting Sundays, to act. The president can do one of three things:

• Sign it. The bill becomes a law.
• Veto it. A veto is the president's refusal to approve a bill. (The word is Latin for "I forbid.") The president sends the bill back to the house where it started, with a written statement of the objections.
• Do nothing. What happens then depends on whether Congress is still in session. If Congress is in session and the president does nothing for ten days (Sundays excepted), the bill becomes law without the president's signature. But if Congress adjourns (ends its session and goes home) before the ten days are up, and the president has not signed, the bill dies. That is called a pocket veto, as if the president had put the bill in a pocket and left it there. Congress cannot override a pocket veto, because there is no session to return it to. It has to start over with a new bill.

Step 7. Override. If the president vetoes a bill, Congress can still make it a law by voting again. This is called an override. It takes a two-thirds vote in both houses. If every member votes, that is 290 of the 435 House members and 67 of the 100 senators. Two-thirds is hard to reach, so most vetoes stand. Presidents have vetoed about 2,600 bills since 1789, and Congress has overridden only a little more than one hundred of them.

The Constitution's own words

In plain words: Every bill that passes both houses must be sent to the president before it can become a law. If the president approves it, the president signs it. If not, the president sends it back, with the reasons, to the house where it began.

In plain words: If two-thirds of the first house votes to pass the bill again, it goes to the other house. If two-thirds of the second house also votes for it, the bill becomes a law without the president's approval. That is the override.

In plain words: If the president keeps a bill for ten days, not counting Sundays, without sending it back, it becomes a law just as if it had been signed, unless Congress has ended its session so that the bill cannot be sent back. In that case it does not become a law. That last part is the pocket veto. (Sundays excepted means not counting Sundays.)

A veto override in history

In 1973, near the end of the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. It said that a president who sends American forces into fighting without a declaration of war must report to Congress within 48 hours, and must bring the forces home within a set time unless Congress approves. President Richard Nixon vetoed it, saying it took away powers the Constitution gave the president. Both houses voted to override, by more than two-thirds, and it became law in November 1973. Presidents of both parties have argued over it ever since.

New York City has its own version of the same process. In 2013 the City Council passed a law requiring many employers to give workers paid sick days. The mayor at the time vetoed it, and the Council overrode the veto with more than two-thirds of its members. The City Charter, the city's own constitution, sets the rules, but the idea is the one in Article I, Section 7.

Drills for this part: II.18 How a bill becomes law: the steps in order. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

The president and the executive branch

Article II creates the executive branch, the branch that carries out the laws. It begins with one short sentence.

In plain words: The power to carry out the laws belongs to the president. The president serves a term of four years.

Notice the difference from Article I. Article I gives Congress the legislative powers "herein granted" and then lists them. Article II simply gives "the executive Power" to the president, without the word "herein." People have argued since the 1790s about whether that gives the president powers beyond the ones listed. Under the Articles of Confederation there was no executive at all. The founders, remembering King George III, were afraid of a strong executive, but they had also seen what happened with none. So they created one person at the head of the branch, and then limited that person in many ways.

Who may be president

In plain words: To be president, you must be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and have lived in the United States for at least 14 years. (A natural-born citizen is someone who was a citizen from birth, not someone who became a citizen later through naturalization. Eligible means allowed to be chosen.) The words "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" made an exception for the founding generation, many of whom had been born as British subjects before there was a United States.

Compare the three offices. A representative must be 25 and a citizen for 7 years. A senator must be 30 and a citizen for 9 years. The president must be 35, a natural-born citizen, and a resident for 14 years. The requirements rise with the office. And only the president must be a citizen from birth. A naturalized citizen can serve in Congress, but cannot be president or vice president.

The term, and the Twenty-second Amendment

The president is elected for a four-year term. (The voters do not choose the president directly. They choose electors, and the electors choose the president. This system, the Electoral College, is explained in Chapter 10.) The original Constitution put no limit on how many terms a president could serve. George Washington chose to step down after two terms, and no president served more than two terms until Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected four times, in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He died in office in 1945.

After Roosevelt, Congress proposed the Twenty-second Amendment, which was ratified in 1951. It says no one may be elected president more than twice. A person who serves more than two years of someone else's term may be elected only once more. So the most anyone can serve is ten years. See All the Amendments.

The president's roles

The president does many different jobs at once. Textbooks and the GED test often describe them as "roles." Some come straight from the words of Article II. Others grew up over time.

Here is the clause that makes the president the chief executive, read slowly:

In plain words: The president must make sure the laws are carried out honestly and fully. Notice the word "shall." It is a duty, not a choice. The president must carry out the laws Congress has passed, including laws the president disagrees with. (Executed here means carried out, not put to death.)

The president's powers, and their limits

Almost every power the Constitution gives the president comes with a limit, usually a role for Congress or the courts. This table puts each power next to its limit.

The pardon clause, read slowly:

In plain words: The president may postpone a punishment (a reprieve) or forgive a crime completely (a pardon), but only for crimes against the United States, that is, federal crimes. The president cannot use a pardon to stop an impeachment. A crime under New York State law can be pardoned only by New York's governor. One famous pardon: in 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, who had just resigned, for any federal crimes he may have committed as president.

Executive orders

An executive order is a written order from the president to officials in the executive branch. It tells them how to carry out a law or how to run their part of the government. It is not a law passed by Congress, and it cannot do what the Constitution or a law forbids. Two examples from the same president show both its power and its limit.

In 1948 President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which ordered equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces "without regard to race." It began the end of separate Black and white units in the military. Truman could do this because, as commander in chief, he directs the armed forces.

In 1952, during the Korean War, steelworkers were about to strike. Truman issued an order for the government to take over the nation's steel mills and keep them running. The steel companies sued. In Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the Supreme Court ruled that the president had no power to do this: no law passed by Congress allowed it, and the Constitution did not give it to him. Truman returned the mills to their owners. An executive order is only as strong as the law or the constitutional power behind it.

The vice president and the line of succession

The vice president has two jobs in the Constitution. The first is to preside over the Senate and cast a vote only when the Senate is tied. The second is to be ready to become president. If the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, the vice president becomes president. Eight presidents have died in office, four of them killed by assassins, and one, Richard Nixon, resigned. Each time, the vice president took over. The Twenty-fifth Amendment (1967) made the rules clearer, including what happens when a president is unable to do the job for a time (All the Amendments).

What if both the president and the vice president cannot serve? A law passed by Congress, the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, sets the order. The line of succession is the order in which officials would become president:

Notice that numbers 2 and 3 come from Congress, the legislative branch. The line goes to Congress's leaders before it goes to the president's own cabinet. A person in the line who does not meet the requirements to be president, for example someone who is a naturalized citizen, is skipped.

The cabinet and the executive departments

The president does not carry out the laws alone. Millions of people work in the executive branch. Most of them work in the executive departments, large offices that each handle one area of government. Each department is headed by a secretary, except the Department of Justice, which is headed by the Attorney General. These department heads, together with the vice president and a few other officials the president chooses, form the cabinet, the president's main group of advisers.

The word "cabinet" is not in the Constitution. What the Constitution says is that the president "may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments." The departments themselves are created by laws passed by Congress, and only Congress, by passing another law, can create, rename, or abolish one. The first departments, created in 1789, were State, Treasury, and War. The newest, Homeland Security, was created in 2002, after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

There are fifteen executive departments. They are listed here in the order they come in the line of succession. That is roughly the order in which they were created, counting from the year the office at the head of each one was first set up. (Defense comes third because it took the place of the War Department of 1789. Justice comes fourth because the office of Attorney General dates from 1789, even though the Department of Justice was organized in 1870.)

Impeachment

The Constitution gives Congress a way to remove a president, a vice president, a judge, or another high official who has seriously abused the office.

In plain words: The president, the vice president, and other officials of the national government must be removed from office if they are impeached and then convicted of treason, bribery, or other serious wrongdoing. (Civil officers means officials who are not in the military. High crimes and misdemeanors is an old phrase for serious abuses of an office; it does not have to be a crime under ordinary criminal law.)

Removal takes two steps, one in each house. Many people think "impeached" means "removed from office." It does not. It means "charged."

1. The House impeaches. The House votes on articles of impeachment, a list of formal charges. If a majority votes yes on any article, the official has been impeached. It is something like a prosecutor formally charging a person with a crime: it is a decision that there is a case to answer, not a decision about guilt.
2. The Senate holds a trial. Senators act as the jury. When the president is on trial, the Chief Justice of the United States presides. Conviction takes two-thirds of the senators present. If the official is convicted, he or she is removed from office, and the Senate may also vote to bar the person from holding federal office again. If fewer than two-thirds vote to convict, the official is acquitted (found not guilty) and stays in office.

Most of the officials ever impeached have been federal judges. As of 2026, the House has impeached three presidents, one of them twice. The Senate did not remove any of them.

One president left office because of the threat of impeachment. In 1972, men connected to President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign were caught breaking into the offices of the Democratic Party at the Watergate building in Washington. Over the next two years it came out that Nixon had helped cover up the crime. In July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment. Before the full House could vote, Nixon resigned, on August 9, 1974. He is the only president ever to resign. Since he was never impeached by the full House, he is not on the list above.

Drills for this part: II.19 The president and the cabinet. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

The courts

Article III creates the judicial branch, the branch that decides cases and says what the laws mean. It is the shortest of the three articles about the branches. It sets up one Supreme Court, lets Congress create lower courts, and protects the judges' independence. Most of the details were left for Congress to fill in, and the first Congress did so in a law called the Judiciary Act of 1789.

The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the country. It meets in Washington, D.C., in a building across the street from the Capitol, and its yearly term begins on the first Monday in October. Its decisions are final. No other court can overrule it. The only ways around a Supreme Court decision about the Constitution are an amendment to the Constitution, or a later decision by the Court itself that changes its mind.

Nine justices. The judges of the Supreme Court are called justices. There are nine: the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices. The number nine is not in the Constitution. It is set by law, and Congress can change it. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number at six. Congress changed it several times in the 1800s, and it has been nine since 1869. In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt, angry that the Court had struck down several of his New Deal laws (the programs he started to fight the Great Depression), proposed a plan that would have let him add up to six more justices. Even members of his own party in Congress opposed it, and the plan failed. Many people saw it as an attempt to "pack" the Court, that is, to fill it with justices who would agree with the president.

How justices are chosen. When a seat on the Court is empty, the president nominates someone, meaning names the person the president wants. The Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings, where senators question the nominee in public. Then the full Senate votes. A majority must vote to confirm (approve) the nominee. Most nominees are confirmed, but not all. In 1987 the Senate voted 58 to 42 against Robert Bork, a nominee of President Ronald Reagan. The same process is used for every federal judge, not only Supreme Court justices.

Life terms. Federal judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour" (Article III, Section 1). There is no fixed term. A judge serves until he or she dies, retires, or resigns, or is impeached and removed. Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached, Samuel Chase, in 1804, and the Senate acquitted him in 1805. Article III also says a judge's pay may not be reduced while the judge is in office. Both rules have the same purpose: a judge should be able to decide a case honestly without fear of losing the job or the paycheck because a president or Congress is unhappy with the decision.

Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, argued that judges need this protection because the courts are the weakest branch:

In plain words: The courts control neither the army ("the sword," which belongs to the president as commander in chief) nor the money ("the purse," which belongs to Congress). They have no force to make people obey and no power to decide what the government will do next. All they have is their judgment. They must even depend on the executive branch to make their decisions take effect. So, Hamilton argued, they need protection from the two stronger branches. (Judiciary means the courts and judges. The executive arm is the executive branch. Efficacy means the power to have an effect.)

The lower federal courts

Under the Supreme Court are two levels of lower federal courts, all created by Congress.

• District courts. There are 94 U.S. district courts. These are trial courts, where a case begins. Witnesses testify, evidence is shown, and, in many cases, a jury decides the facts. Every state has at least one district court. New York has four. The Southern District of New York, at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, covers Manhattan and the Bronx along with counties to the north. The Eastern District, in downtown Brooklyn, covers Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island along with Long Island.
• Courts of appeals. There are 13 U.S. courts of appeals. Twelve of them each cover a region of the country, called a circuit, and one, the Federal Circuit, hears certain special kinds of cases from the whole country. A court of appeals does not hold a new trial. There are no witnesses and no jury. Usually a panel of three judges reads the record of the trial, hears the lawyers argue, and decides whether the trial court made a mistake about the law. New York is in the Second Circuit, which also covers Connecticut and Vermont.

Most cases in the United States never go near a federal court. Traffic tickets, most crimes, divorces, landlord and tenant cases, and most lawsuits between neighbors or businesses are heard in state courts, under state law. Federal courts hear cases about the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, and treaties; cases where the United States government is a party; cases between states; and some cases between people from different states.

Original and appellate jurisdiction

Jurisdiction means a court's authority to hear a certain kind of case. There are two kinds that you need to know.

• Original jurisdiction means the power to hear a case first, when it begins: to hold the trial, hear the evidence, and decide the facts.
• Appellate jurisdiction means the power to hear a case on appeal, after a lower court has already decided it. To appeal is to ask a higher court to review a lower court's decision.

In plain words: In a small number of cases, those involving ambassadors and other representatives of foreign countries, and those in which a state is one of the sides, the Supreme Court hears the case first. In every other kind of federal case, the Supreme Court hears it only on appeal, after a lower court. (Consuls are officials who represent a foreign country in a city of another country. Party here means one of the sides in a case.)

An example of original jurisdiction comes from New York Harbor. Ellis Island, where millions of immigrants first landed, sits on New Jersey's side of the harbor. In 1834 the two states made an agreement that the island, which was then about three acres, would belong to New York. Beginning in the 1890s, the federal government made the island about nine times larger by adding landfill around it. New Jersey said the added land was its own. Because one state was suing another, the case, New Jersey v. New York, went straight to the Supreme Court. In 1998 the Court decided that the original island belongs to New York, but most of the land added later belongs to New Jersey.

Almost all of the Supreme Court's work, though, is appellate. It hears cases that have already been decided by lower courts.

How a case reaches the Supreme Court

1. The case begins in a trial court: a federal district court, or a state court.
2. The side that loses may appeal. A federal case goes to a U.S. court of appeals. A state case goes up through the state's own appeals courts, ending at the state's highest court. In New York, that is the Court of Appeals in Albany.
3. The side that loses there may ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. This request is called a petition for a writ of certiorari, often shortened to "cert." (Certiorari is Latin and is pronounced "sir-shee-uh-RARE-ee." A writ is a written court order. A writ of certiorari is an order to the lower court to send up the record of the case.) A state case can go to the Supreme Court only if it raises a question about the U.S. Constitution or federal law.
4. The justices decide whether to take the case. The Court is not required to hear most cases. By long custom, if four of the nine justices vote to hear a case, the Court takes it. This custom is called the "rule of four." The Court receives thousands of petitions each year and agrees to hear fewer than one hundred. If the Court says no, the lower court's decision stands.
5. If the Court takes the case, the lawyers for both sides file written arguments and then argue in person before the justices, who ask them questions. The justices meet in private and vote. A majority decides the case.
6. One justice in the majority writes the majority opinion, which explains the Court's reasons. A justice who agrees with the result but for different reasons may write a concurring opinion. A justice who disagrees may write a dissenting opinion, or dissent. The decision becomes a precedent: an earlier decision that courts follow in later cases with similar facts.

A dissent does not change the result, but sometimes a dissent is later adopted by the Court. Chapter 9 gives a famous example: the lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Drills for this part: II.20 The federal courts, and how a case reaches the Supreme Court. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

Judicial review: Marbury v. Madison

Judicial review is the power of the courts to decide whether a law or an action of the government goes against the Constitution, and if it does, to refuse to enforce it. A law that goes against the Constitution is called unconstitutional. When a court finds a law unconstitutional, people say the court has "struck down" the law.

This is one of the most important powers in the American government. Yet you will not find the words "judicial review" anywhere in the Constitution. The Supreme Court claimed this power for itself in 1803, in a case called Marbury v. Madison. Here is the story, told slowly, because it is complicated and the test likes to ask about it.

The election of 1800

By 1800, the country's leaders had split into two political parties. (A political party is an organized group that tries to win elections so that it can control the government.) The Federalists, the party of President John Adams, wanted a strong national government. (This party grew out of the Federalists of Chapter 4, the people who had supported the Constitution.) The Democratic-Republicans, the party of Thomas Jefferson, wanted to keep more power in the states and with ordinary farmers. In the election of 1800, Jefferson defeated Adams. The Federalists also lost control of Congress.

In those days a new president did not take office until March 4. So Adams and the Federalist Congress had a few months left after losing the election, and they used them. In February 1801 they passed laws creating many new judges' positions. One of these laws created new positions for justices of the peace, minor local judges, in Washington, D.C. Adams quickly filled the new positions with members of his own party.

The midnight appointments

On March 2, 1801, two days before he left office, Adams nominated more than forty men to be justices of the peace. On March 3, his last full day as president, the Senate confirmed them, and their commissions were signed and sealed. A commission is the official paper that gives a person an office. Because Adams was filling positions up to the last hours of his term, these appointees came to be called the "midnight judges."

The commissions still had to be delivered. Adams's Secretary of State was John Marshall. In early 1801 Adams had also made Marshall the Chief Justice of the United States, and Marshall held both jobs for a few weeks. Marshall's brother helped carry the commissions, but in the rush some were not delivered before Adams's term ended. One of the undelivered commissions belonged to a man named William Marbury.

On March 4, 1801, Jefferson became president. His new Secretary of State was James Madison, the same Madison who had helped write the Constitution. Jefferson saw no reason to help Federalists take office, and the undelivered commissions were held back. Marbury never received his.

Marbury goes to court

Marbury went straight to the Supreme Court. He asked it to issue a writ of mandamus against Madison. A writ of mandamus is a court order telling a government official to do something the law requires. Marbury wanted the Court to order Madison to hand over his commission. Why go straight to the Supreme Court, without starting in a lower court? Because a law Congress had passed, Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, seemed to say the Supreme Court could issue such orders in a case that began there.

The case was a trap for the Court. Congress, now controlled by Jefferson's party, passed a law that changed the Court's schedule, so the Court did not meet at all in 1802. The case was not decided until February 24, 1803. If the Court ordered Madison to deliver the commission, Jefferson would probably ignore the order. The Court had no army and no money to make him obey. It would look powerless. But if the Court said Marbury had no right to his commission, it would look as if it were afraid of the president.

Marshall's answer

Chief Justice Marshall wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court: every justice who took part agreed. He asked three questions, one after another.

1. Does Marbury have a right to his commission? Yes. It was signed and sealed, and the appointment was complete. Holding it back was wrong.
2. Do the laws give him a remedy? (A remedy is a way the law sets a wrong right.) Yes. A government of laws must provide a remedy when someone's legal right is violated.
3. Can this Court give him that remedy, by issuing the order he asked for? No. This third answer is the important one. Article III lists the few kinds of cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, cases about ambassadors and cases where a state is a party. Marbury's case was neither. Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 tried to give the Court more original jurisdiction than Article III allows. Congress cannot change the Constitution by passing an ordinary law. So that part of the Judiciary Act was unconstitutional, and the Court would not follow it.

So Marbury lost. He never became a justice of the peace. But the Court, in that same decision, declared that it had the power to decide that a law passed by Congress and signed by the president is unconstitutional and void. Two sentences from Marshall's opinion are quoted often:

In plain words: It is clearly the job and the duty of the courts to decide what the law means. (Emphatically means strongly, without any doubt. Province here means area of responsibility, as in "that is not my province.")

In plain words: A law passed by a legislature that conflicts with the Constitution is not valid. (Repugnant to means in conflict with. Void means having no legal force, as if it did not exist.)

Marshall's reasoning ran like this. The Constitution is the highest law; Article VI calls it "the supreme Law of the Land." Judges must decide cases according to the law. If an ordinary law and the Constitution conflict, the judge has to choose one, and the judge must choose the higher law, the Constitution.

Notice how Marshall escaped the trap. He gave Jefferson's side the result it wanted: Marbury did not get his commission, so there was no order for Jefferson to defy. And in exchange, the Court gained a much larger power, the power to strike down laws. Marshall gave up a small power, issuing one order, and claimed a great one.

What came after

The Supreme Court did not strike down another law of Congress for more than fifty years. The next time was in 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, when the Court ruled that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the western territories. It is a reminder that judicial review is a power, and a power can be used to deny rights as well as to protect them. The Fourteenth Amendment later overturned the Dred Scott decision (Chapter 8).

Since then, judicial review has become a regular part of American government. Courts use it to review federal laws, state and local laws, and the actions of presidents and other officials. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court struck down state laws that segregated public schools, that is, kept Black and white children in separate schools. In United States v. Nixon (1974), the Court ruled unanimously that President Nixon had to hand over tape recordings of his conversations, even though he claimed a president had the right to keep them secret.

The Nixon case deserves a closer look, because the test often asks about it. In 1974 a special prosecutor, a lawyer appointed to investigate the Watergate break-in and the cover-up that followed, asked for tape recordings of conversations in the president's office. He needed them as evidence in the criminal trial of several of Nixon's top aides. Nixon refused. He claimed executive privilege: the right of a president to keep his private conversations with his advisers secret. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court decided against him, 8 to 0. (One justice, William Rehnquist, did not take part, because he had worked in Nixon's Justice Department.) Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the opinion. The Court said that a president does have a privilege to keep some conversations confidential, but that the privilege is not absolute, meaning it has limits. A general claim of privilege cannot outweigh the need for evidence in a criminal trial. Nixon handed over the tapes. One of them showed that six days after the break-in, he had approved a plan to have the CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency, which gathers secret information about other countries) ask the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the national government's police agency for federal crimes) to stop its investigation of the break-in. That tape was made public on August 5, 1974, and four days later Nixon resigned. People often sum up the case in a few words: no one is above the law, not even the president.

Not everyone has agreed that judges should have the last word. Hamilton had argued for judicial review in The Federalist No. 78, saying courts must have the duty "to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void." (Manifest tenor means clear meaning.) Jefferson, years later, warned against it:

In plain words: Treating judges as the final deciders of every question about the Constitution is a dangerous idea. It would put us under the unlimited rule of a small group. Judges are no more honest than anyone else. Their power is all the more dangerous because they serve for life and, unlike other officials, do not have to answer to the voters. (An arbiter is someone who settles a dispute. A doctrine is a principle or belief. Despotism is rule by someone with unlimited power. An oligarchy is rule by a small group; Chapter 1 defines it. Functionaries means officials. Controul is an old spelling of "control." The "[d]" in brackets was added by the modern editors of Jefferson's letters, to fill in a letter lost where the edge of the page was trimmed. The small letters at the start of some sentences are Jefferson's own.)

Drills for this part: II.21 Judicial review: Marbury v. Madison · III.27 The power of the national government: Marbury, McCulloch, Gibbons, U.S. v. Nixon. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

Checks and balances

Separation of powers divides the government into three branches. Checks and balances is the next step: each branch is given ways to limit, or "check," the other two, so that no branch can act completely alone and the three stay in balance. A check here means a way to stop or hold back, the way a person checks a fall by grabbing a railing.

Madison explained the idea in The Federalist No. 51. Writing on paper that the branches should stay separate is not enough, he said. Each branch needs the power, and the personal reason, to defend itself against the others.

In plain words: The best protection against one branch slowly gathering all the power is to give the people who run each branch both the legal tools and their own personal reasons to push back when another branch tries to take over their territory. (Department here means branch. Encroachments are steps taken into someone else's territory, little by little.)

The checks, branch by branch

Notice that some checks belong to only one house of Congress. Only the House impeaches. Only the Senate holds the trial, confirms appointments, and approves treaties. The two houses are also a check on each other, since a bill needs both.

And behind all three branches stand the voters. At elections, the people judge the whole House every two years, the president every four years, and each senator every six years. Through their states, the people can also amend the Constitution itself.

Checks and balances in history

These checks are not just words on paper. Each one has been used. Several of these stories appeared earlier in this chapter; here they are together, with the check each one shows.

• 1919 and 1920: The Senate twice fails to approve the Treaty of Versailles, which would have brought the United States into the League of Nations, after World War I. Legislative checks executive.
• 1937: Congress refuses President Franklin Roosevelt's plan to add up to six justices to the Supreme Court. Legislative checks executive, and protects the judicial branch.
• 1952: In Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court rules that President Truman had no power to seize the steel mills. Judicial checks executive.
• 1957: After the governor of Arkansas used the state's National Guard to keep nine Black students out of Central High School in Little Rock, President Dwight Eisenhower sends U.S. Army troops to escort them in, carrying out the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The courts have no army of their own. The executive enforces the judicial branch's decision. This is what Hamilton meant when he wrote that the courts "must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm."
• 1973: Congress passes the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon's veto. Legislative checks executive.
• 1974: In United States v. Nixon, the Court orders the president to turn over his tape recordings. Facing impeachment, he resigns. Judicial and legislative check the executive.
• 1987: The Senate votes 58 to 42 against President Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork. Legislative checks executive, over the makeup of the judicial branch.
• 2009: In 2007 the Supreme Court read a federal law against pay discrimination in a way that kept a worker named Lilly Ledbetter from suing over years of lower pay, because she had filed too late. In 2009 Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, changing the law so that workers in her position could sue. When the Court interprets a law (not the Constitution), Congress can change the law. Legislative checks judicial.

Drills for this part: II.14 Checks and balances: name the check · III.27 The power of the national government: Marbury, McCulloch, Gibbons, U.S. v. Nixon. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

Two ways of seeing the slowness

Put together everything in this chapter, and you get a government that moves slowly. A bill must pass two houses, elected at different times by different groups of voters, and then get past the president. In the Senate, most bills need 60 votes to end debate. The courts may strike the law down afterward. Each step is a place where the bill can be stopped.

When the branches cannot agree, and nothing gets done, people call it gridlock. (The word comes from city traffic. Gridlock is what happens in Midtown Manhattan when cars block every intersection and no one can move in any direction.) When the president's party does not control both houses of Congress, people call it divided government, and gridlock becomes more likely. Several times since the 1990s, parts of the federal government have shut down because Congress and the president could not agree on a budget.

Is this slowness a flaw in the system, or is it the system working as it was designed? Americans have argued about this from the beginning. Here are the two views, each in its own words.

The first view: the slowness protects liberty

In plain words: Set the ambitions of the people in each branch against each other, so that each one's wish for power holds back the others'. If people were perfect, we would need no government. If perfect beings ran the government, we would need no limits on it. But people govern people. So a government must first be strong enough to keep order among the people, and then it must be made to keep itself in order. (Counteract means work against. Framing means building or designing. Oblige means force.)

People who hold this view say that the slowness is the point. A law that has to pass the House, the Senate, and the president needs support from many kinds of people in many parts of the country. That forces compromise. It stops a temporary majority, stirred up by anger or fear, from passing something it will regret. It protects people in the minority, whose rights a majority might trample. And it means no single leader can change the country's laws by himself or herself. Supporters point out that the same checks that slow down laws they like also stop laws they fear, whichever party is in power. A government that can do great good quickly can also do great harm quickly. They point to stories from Part 9: the checks stopped a president from seizing the steel mills without a law, and stopped another from adding justices to the Supreme Court.

The second view: the slowness blocks the majority

In plain words: It is clearly a deep flaw in our system that it divides power into pieces and makes it hard to know who is responsible for what. The main purpose of the men who wrote the Constitution seems to have been to make this terrible mistake. (Manifestly means clearly. Radical here means at the root, basic. Parcels out means divides into parcels, or pieces. Grievous means very serious.)

Wilson wrote this as a young scholar of politics, almost thirty years before he became president himself. He admired the British parliamentary system (Chapter 1), where the party that wins a majority in Parliament also forms the government and can carry out its program.

People who hold this view say that when power is cut into pieces, voters cannot tell whom to blame. Each branch blames the others, and nothing changes. They say a majority of the people can want something for years and never get it, because a small group in one place can block it. And they point to history to show who has paid the price. In 1922 the House passed a bill to make lynching a federal crime. Senators from the South blocked it with a filibuster, and they blocked later anti-lynching bills the same way for decades. A federal law making lynching a hate crime was not signed until 2022. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed only after a Senate filibuster that lasted sixty working days. On this view, the system's slowness has most often protected those who already had power, and has made people without power wait.

Weighing the two views

Notice that both views agree on the facts. The system is slow, and it was built to be. They disagree about whether that is good, and the answer people give often depends on what they want the government to do, or to stop doing, at that moment. Notice too that some of the slowness comes from the Constitution itself (two houses, the veto, judicial review), and some comes from rules that could be changed without an amendment, such as the Senate's filibuster rule.

The GED test will not ask you which view is right. It will ask you to recognize a point of view: to tell which writer favors the checks and which criticizes them, to find the evidence each one uses, and to tell a fact from an opinion. "A bill must pass both houses" is a fact. "Dividing power this way was a grievous mistake" is an opinion.

Words to know

Preamble

The opening sentence of the Constitution, beginning "We the People." It states who is making the Constitution and the six goals it serves, but gives no powers.

Article, section, clause

An article is a numbered main section of the Constitution (there are seven). Articles are divided into sections. A clause is one sentence or part of a sentence that makes a single rule.

Amendment

A formal change or addition to the Constitution. There are twenty-seven. In Congress, "amendment" can also mean a change to a bill.

Posterity

The generations who come after us.

Shall, may, shall not

In the Constitution, "shall" means must, "may" means is allowed to, and "shall not" means is forbidden.

Separation of powers

Dividing the government's power among separate branches so that no one person or group holds it all.

Branch

One of the three main parts of the government, each with its own job.

Legislative

Having to do with making laws. The legislative branch is Congress.

Executive

Having to do with carrying out laws. The executive branch is headed by the president.

Judicial

Having to do with courts and judges. The judicial branch is the federal courts, led by the Supreme Court.

Tyranny

Cruel and unfair rule by someone with too much power.

Bicameral

Having two houses. Congress is bicameral: the House and the Senate.

Census

The official count of everyone in the country, taken every ten years. It decides how many House seats each state gets.

District (congressional district)

A part of a state that elects one member of the House. Each has about the same number of people.

Speaker of the House

The leader of the House of Representatives, chosen by its members. Second in the line of succession.

President pro tempore

The senator who presides over the Senate when the vice president is absent. Third in the line of succession.

Enumerated powers

The powers that the Constitution lists for Congress, mostly in Article I, Section 8.

Necessary and proper clause (elastic clause)

The last clause of Article I, Section 8. It lets Congress make the laws it needs to carry out its listed powers.

Writ of habeas corpus

A court order to bring a prisoner before a judge, who decides whether the prisoner is held lawfully.

Bill

A proposed law.

Committee

A small group of members of Congress who study bills on one subject. Most bills die in committee.

Hearing

A meeting where a committee listens to experts, officials, or members of the public.

Filibuster and cloture

A filibuster is the use of long debate in the Senate to block a vote. Cloture is a vote to end debate; on most bills it takes 60 senators.

Conference committee

Members of both houses who meet to work out one version of a bill when the House and Senate have passed different versions.

Veto

The president's refusal to approve a bill. From the Latin for "I forbid."

Pocket veto

When Congress adjourns within ten days (Sundays excepted) of sending the president a bill, and the president does not sign it, the bill dies. It cannot be overridden.

Override

Passing a bill again over the president's veto. It takes two-thirds of both houses.

Adjourn

To end a meeting or a session.

Natural-born citizen

A person who was a citizen from birth. Only a natural-born citizen may be president.

Naturalization

The process by which a person born a citizen of another country becomes a U.S. citizen.

Commander in chief

The head of the armed forces. Under the Constitution, it is the president.

Treaty

A formal agreement between countries. The president makes treaties, and two-thirds of the senators present must approve.

Confirm

To approve. The Senate confirms the president's appointments by majority vote.

Executive order

A written order from the president to the executive branch about how to carry out the laws. It must rest on the Constitution or a law.

Pardon and reprieve

A pardon forgives a crime. A reprieve postpones a punishment. The president may grant them only for federal crimes.

Line of succession

The order in which officials would become president: the vice president, the Speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, then the cabinet secretaries, starting with the Secretary of State.

Executive department

One of the fifteen large offices of the executive branch, each handling one area of government. Each is created by a law passed by Congress.

Cabinet

The president's main advisers: the heads of the executive departments, the vice president, and some other officials.

Impeach

To formally charge a high official with serious wrongdoing. Only the House can impeach. Impeached does not mean removed.

Articles of impeachment

The list of charges the House votes on.

Acquit

To find not guilty. In an impeachment trial, the Senate acquits when fewer than two-thirds vote to convict.

Justice

A judge of the Supreme Court. There are nine: the Chief Justice and eight associate justices.

"During good Behaviour"

The Constitution's words for how long federal judges serve: as long as they behave properly, which in practice means for life.

Trial court

The court where a case begins: witnesses testify, evidence is shown, and the facts are decided.

District court

A federal trial court, where a case begins. There are 94.

Court of appeals

A federal court that reviews the decisions of district courts. There are 13.

Jurisdiction

A court's authority to hear a certain kind of case. Original jurisdiction is the power to hear a case first. Appellate jurisdiction is the power to hear it on appeal.

Appeal

To ask a higher court to review a lower court's decision.

Petition for a writ of certiorari ("cert")

A request asking the Supreme Court to hear a case. The Court may accept or refuse. By the "rule of four," four justices must agree to hear it.

Majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions

The majority opinion explains the Court's decision. A concurring opinion agrees with the result for different reasons. A dissenting opinion (a dissent) disagrees.

Precedent

An earlier court decision that courts follow in later cases with similar facts.

Judicial review

The power of the courts to decide whether a law or a government action violates the Constitution, and to refuse to enforce it if it does. Established in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Unconstitutional

In conflict with the Constitution, and so not valid.

Commission

The official paper that gives a person an office.

Remedy

A way the law sets a wrong right.

Writ of mandamus

A court order telling a government official to do something the law requires.

Checks and balances

The ways each branch can limit the other two, so that no branch can act completely alone.

Gridlock

When the branches cannot agree, and nothing gets done.

Divided government

When the president's party does not control both houses of Congress.