National Constitution Center

  By leaving the “wisdom” and “fairness” of transgender minors’ health care to “the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process,” the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, in a decision starkly reminiscent of   its 2022 overruling  of   Roe v. Wade , left in place a long and difficult legal path forward for advocates of transgender rights. The 6-3 majority in  United States v. Skrmetti  ruled that Tennessee’s law prohibiting medical professionals from providing hormone therapy or puberty-delaying drugs to transgender minors does not violate the  Equal Protection Clause  of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority rejected arguments that the law discriminated on the basis of sex and transgender status. If the law had discriminated because of sex-based classifications, the Court would have applied what it calls “heightened scrutiny” to the law. The state would have to show that the law “serves important governmental objectives a...

  In a 1920 Supreme Court decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that “men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.” In a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “But it is also true, particularly when so much is at stake, that ‘the Government should turn square corners in dealing with the people.’" The government’s failure to do so in the context of immigration enforcement and the Supreme Court’s silence— complicity? — in the face of it is what has bitterly divided the Justices in the closing weeks of their term. Roberts’ comments five years ago ironically came in a  decision  involving immigration and the Department of Homeland Security. The Justices took briefs and heard arguments on the department’s decision to terminate DACA, a program giving temporary relief from removal to “Dreamers”– children brought to the United States by their illegal immigrant parents.  In that case, a 5-4 majority, led by Roberts, ruled t...

  June 15, 1776: The seeds of dissent stirred in the soil that day. Three lower counties of Pennsylvania (later to become the colony of Delaware) fearlessly declared their independence from the British Crown. Three months later, Delaware enacted its Declaration of Rights. Before the thirteen colonies proclaimed their independence on July 4, 1776 and long before the Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788, Delaware played a significant role in the revolutionary and constitutional process (it was the first colony to ratify the Federal Constitution). Much of that courageous revolutionary spirit was on display in Lewes, the first town in the first state. In so many ways, the life force of American independence took root in Lewes, where liberty pole gatherings dauntlessly condemned King George and where British cannon balls attempted to crush that rebellious temperament. Looking Back As early as 1766, patriotic trouble brewed in Lewes. Protestors, known as “the Sons of Liberty,”...

  On August 23, 1784, the self-proclaimed state of Franklin broke away from North Carolina and attempted an experiment at self-rule, in a dispute over land grants and sovereignty. In June 1784, the North Carolina state government agreed to cede three of its western counties to the Confederation Congress  in an attempt to assist with the large national debt following the revolutionary war.  Upon hearing of North Carolina’s cession, the three counties’ residents met in Jonesborough that August to declare their own independent legal state, separate from North Carolina. Although North Carolina changed its mind by fall of 1784 about handing the three counties over to the federal government, the state of Franklin’s leaders were determined to continue with their plan for independence. They  wrote their own Declaration of Independence  and proposed a draft constitution in December 1784. “We unanimously agree that our lives, liberties and Prosperity can be more secure ...

  Section 1 No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Section 2 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress. Common Interpretation by F.H. Buckley Foundation...

  With the anniversary of the 22nd Amendment on Friday,   Constitution Daily   looks at two hot-button topics: Should a President be allowed to serve a third term? And should members of Congress and the Supreme Court have term limits like the President? The 22nd Amendment  brought the idea of term limits into the Constitution. When it was ratified in 1951, the amendment limited a President from effectively serving a third term, by saying that a President who won two elections can’t run a third time. The 22nd Amendment also bars a President from serving more than 10 years in office, in a case of a President who assumed office as Vice President. For example, Vice President Gerald Ford took over for President Richard Nixon in 1974 and served more than two years as president. If Ford had defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election, Ford could not have run for re-election. Long before the 22nd Amendment, George Washington had set an unofficial precedent in 179...

  Section 1 Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. Common Interpretation by Stephen E. Sachs Professor of Law, Duke University Law School by Steve Sanders Professor of Law; Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Gender Studies and The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University-Bloomington Most of the original Constitution focuses on creating the federal government, defining its relationship to the states and the people at large. Article IV addresses something different: the states’ relations with each other, sometimes called “horizontal federalism.” Its first section, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, requires every state, as part of a single nation, to give a certain measure of respect to every other s...