100 Things Every American Should Know About the Constitution

The whole thing fits on four sheets of parchment and runs roughly 4,400 words. You can read it out loud in about half an hour. Most people never have. Signed September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, it's the oldest written national constitution still in force, and it's shorter than the owner's manual for your truck.

Read it once a year. Until then, know these.

Start with the basics

1. It was signed September 17, 1787, at the Pennsylvania State House, now called Independence Hall.
2. Thirty-nine men signed it. Fifty-five delegates came and went over a hot summer.
3. Three delegates who stayed to the end refused to sign: George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, Edmund Randolph.
4. It has seven articles and twenty-seven amendments. That's it.
5. Jacob Shallus, a clerk for the Pennsylvania Assembly, handwrote the engrossed copy. He was paid thirty dollars.
6. It took effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, June 21, 1788.
7. The new government started work March 4, 1789.
8. Rhode Island ratified last, in May 1790, after the government it was joining already existed.
9. The original is in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Go see it. The line moves fast on a weekday morning.
10. The word "democracy" never appears. "Republican Form of Government" does, in Article IV.
11. The word "slavery" never appears in the original text either. The men who wrote around it knew exactly what they were doing.
12. September 17 is Constitution Day. Nobody gets the day off. Read it anyway.

The men in the room

1. Washington presided and barely spoke. His presence was the argument.
2. James Madison took the notes we still rely on and earned the nickname "Father of the Constitution."
3. Benjamin Franklin was 81 and the oldest delegate. He had to have some of his remarks read aloud for him.
4. Asked what they'd produced, Franklin reportedly said, "A republic, if you can keep it." The "if" is doing the heavy lifting.
5. Jefferson and Adams weren't there. Both were abroad on diplomatic posts.
6. Rhode Island sent nobody at all.
7. The delegates met behind closed windows in the summer heat and kept the proceedings secret, which is why we got a document instead of a performance.
8. The Federalist Papers are 85 essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, published under the pen name "Publius."
9. Federalist 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." That's the whole theory of the thing in nine words.
10. The Anti-Federalists lost the fight and won the Bill of Rights. Losing well is its own contribution.

Article I, where the power actually sits

1. Article I is the longest article, because Congress was meant to be the strongest branch.
2. "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress." Herein granted. Not all powers that exist.
3. The House has 435 members. That number isn't in the Constitution; Congress froze it by statute in 1929.
4. House members serve two years, must be 25 and a citizen for seven years.
5. Senators serve six years, must be 30 and a citizen for nine years.
6. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures. The Seventeenth Amendment changed that in 1913, and it changed what a senator answers to.
7. Revenue bills have to originate in the House. The people closest to an election tax you first.
8. A veto override takes two-thirds of both chambers.
9. A pocket veto happens when Congress adjourns inside the ten-day window and the president simply doesn't sign.
10. Article I, Section 8 lists the enumerated powers of Congress. There are eighteen clauses. Read them.
11. Congress can't fund the Army for more than two years at a time. A standing army made them nervous.
12. The Necessary and Proper Clause is the last one, and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) stretched it wide.
13. The Commerce Clause did most of the twentieth century's heavy lifting. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), a farmer's wheat grown for his own animals counted as interstate commerce.
14. Habeas corpus can only be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion.
15. Bills of attainder and ex post facto laws are banned, for Congress and the states both. Government doesn't get to criminalize what you already did.

Article II, the executive

1. The president must be 35, a natural born citizen, and a resident for 14 years.
2. The presidential oath is written out word for word. It's the only oath the Constitution spells out.
3. The president swears to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution, not the country, not the party.
4. He's Commander in Chief. Congress declares war. Those two facts have been arguing since 1787.
5. Treaties need two-thirds of the Senate.
6. Major appointments need Senate advice and consent. That's why judicial confirmations get loud.
7. The pardon power covers federal offenses and stops at impeachment.
8. The Take Care Clause requires him to see the laws "faithfully executed," including ones he dislikes.
9. There are 538 electors and 270 wins it.
10. If nobody gets a majority, the House picks, voting by state delegation, one vote each. Wyoming equals California.
11. Impeachment is a House majority. Conviction takes two-thirds of the Senate. The punishment is removal and disqualification, nothing more.

Article III and the courts

1. The Constitution creates exactly one court: the Supreme Court. Everything below it's Congress's doing.
2. It never says how many justices. Nine has been the number since 1869, by statute.
3. Federal judges serve "during good Behaviour," which in practice means for life.
4. Judicial review isn't in the text. Marbury v. Madison (1803) established it.
5. Treason is the only crime the Constitution defines.
6. Conviction for treason requires two witnesses to the same overt act, or confession in open court. They'd seen treason charges used as a political weapon.
7. You have a right to a jury trial in criminal cases, in the state where the crime happened.
8. The Court takes roughly sixty to seventy cases a year out of thousands of petitions.
9. Read a dissent sometime. The losing argument tells you where the law is headed.

Articles IV through VII

1. Full Faith and Credit means your marriage license works in every state.
2. Article IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause stops a state from treating out-of-staters as second class.
3. Extradition between states is right there in the text.
4. Congress admits new states. No state can be carved out of another without that state's consent.
5. The Guarantee Clause promises every state a republican form of government.
6. Article V: amendments take two-thirds of both houses, or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, then three-fourths of the states to ratify. That's 38 today.
7. The convention route has never been used. Not once.
8. The Supremacy Clause makes federal law supreme, but only law "made in Pursuance" of the Constitution.
9. Article VI bans any religious test for federal office. The only place God appears in the document is the date line, "in the Year of our Lord."

The Bill of Rights

1. Twelve amendments were proposed in 1789. Ten were ratified in 1791.
2. The First protects six things: no establishment of religion, free exercise, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
3. "Congress shall make no law" appears in the First Amendment only.
4. "Separation of church and state" is a phrase from a Jefferson letter, not from the Constitution.
5. The Second: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The operative clause is a right of the people.
6. District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) confirmed it's an individual right.
7. McDonald v. Chicago (2010) applied it against the states.
8. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) set a text, history, and tradition test and covered carry outside the home.
9. Knowing the amendment isn't the same as knowing your state's law. Learn both, then get training.
10. The Third bars quartering soldiers in your house. It's the least litigated amendment, which means it worked.
11. The Fourth requires warrants on probable cause, describing the place and the things to be seized. Specificity is the point.
12. The Fifth covers grand juries, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, due process, and just compensation for takings.
13. Kelo v. New London (2005) let a city take homes for private development. Forty-plus states tightened their own laws afterward.
14. The Sixth gives you a speedy public trial, an impartial jury, the right to confront witnesses, and counsel.
15. The Seventh guarantees a civil jury where the amount exceeds twenty dollars. Nobody's adjusted it for inflation.
16. The Ninth says listing rights doesn't deny the others. The Tenth reserves everything not delegated to the states, or to the people.

The other seventeen

1. Eleventh (1795): limits suing a state in federal court.
2. Twelfth (1804): separate electoral ballots for president and vice president.
3. Thirteenth (1865): abolished slavery. Fourteenth (1868): citizenship, due process, equal protection. Fifteenth (1870): the vote regardless of race.
4. The Fourteenth is how most of the Bill of Rights came to bind the states. Lawyers call it incorporation.
5. Sixteenth (1913): the income tax. Seventeenth (1913): direct election of senators. A consequential year.
6. Eighteenth (1919) banned alcohol. Twenty-first (1933) repealed it, the only amendment to undo another.
7. The Twenty-first is also the only one ratified by state conventions instead of legislatures.
8. Nineteenth (1920): women's suffrage.
9. Twentieth (1933) moved inauguration from March 4 to January 20 and cut the lame-duck season short.
10. Twenty-second (1951): two terms. Twenty-third (1961): electors for D.C. Twenty-fourth (1964): no poll taxes. Twenty-fifth (1967): succession and disability. Twenty-sixth (1971): the vote at 18.
11. The Twenty-seventh was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992, after a University of Texas student made a project of it. Congressional pay raises now wait for an election.

What to do with all this

1. Congress has sent 33 amendments to the states. Twenty-seven made it. Thousands more died in committee.
2. Buy a pocket Constitution. They cost about a dollar. Keep one in the glove box and one in the kitchen drawer.
3. Learn your two senators, your representative, and your state legislator by name. Call the district office, not the D.C. one.
4. Read Article I, Section 8 aloud with your kids and ask them what's missing from the list. The conversation writes itself.
5. Go to a naturalization ceremony. Watch grown men cry over a document you were handed for free.
6. Show up for jury duty. It's one of two places the Constitution puts you personally in charge of the government's power.
7. Memorize the Preamble. Fifty-two words, and your grandchildren should hear them from you before they hear them from a screen.

The men who wrote it assumed you'd be reading it. That assumption is the only thing holding it up.