115 Fun Facts About US Constitution

In which building did the delegates meet to draft the Constitution in the summer of 1787?

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, was then the Pennsylvania State House, and the delegates met there in secret, with no reporters or visitors allowed.

Which delegate who refused to sign lent his name to rigged maps?

Elbridge Gerry: an 1812 Boston Gazette cartoon turned a district drawn under his administration into a salamander, the 'Gerry-mander', and in 1813 he became vice president.

The Constitution forbids the federal government from granting what?

Titles of nobility: in 1810 Congress even sent the states an amendment stripping citizenship from anyone who accepted a foreign title, but it was never ratified.

What collective name is given to the first ten amendments?

The Bill of Rights grew from a bargain: Massachusetts ratified only after Federalists agreed to recommend amendments protecting individual rights.

The Constitution superseded which earlier framework of national government on March 4, 1789?

The Articles of Confederation let Congress only request money, and the states regularly failed or refused to pay what they were asked.

Which three words open the Preamble to the Constitution?

We the People opens a Preamble that grants no powers: in 1905 the Supreme Court said no substantive federal power had ever been drawn from it.

Which Pennsylvania delegate is credited with mainly writing the Preamble?

Gouverneur Morris led the Committee of Style's final draft, which dropped earlier wording that listed the separate states.

Which future president missed the 1787 convention while serving as minister to France?

Thomas Jefferson followed the convention from Paris and wrote to John Adams that it was 'really an assembly of demigods'.

Which of the thirteen states refused to send any delegates to the convention?

Rhode Island stayed away because its leaders, wedded to paper money, distrusted a distant, stronger national government.

What did the Constitution require before it could take effect?

Nine states ratifying: that replaced the old rule that every state must agree to any change, which had let a single state block it.

Which state was the first to ratify the Constitution, by a unanimous 30-0 vote?

Its licence plates still carry the boast "The First State".

Which state's ratification on June 21, 1788, made the Constitution operative?

New Hampshire's vote made it operative, so Virginia and New York, ratifying within weeks, joined a government already approved.

In a 1789 letter about the new Constitution, which two things did Benjamin Franklin call the only certainties?

Death and taxes: Franklin hoped the Constitution would last, but the line wasn't his invention; a 1716 English play had already used it.

Which Supreme Court ruling declared segregated public schools unconstitutional?

Brown v. Board: the unanimous 1954 court called separate schools 'inherently unequal', overturning the 'separate but equal' rule it had upheld since 1896.

Which Virginia delegate refused to sign the Constitution without a written list of rights?

George Mason: his 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights later became a model for the amendments ratified in 1791.

Franklin mused about a rising or setting sun painted on what object in the convention hall?

The president's chair: as the delegates signed, Franklin said he at last knew its painted sun was rising, not setting.

Whose detailed notes of the secret convention debates were published only after his death in 1836?

James Madison: the convention secretary's official records were so brief that Madison's private notes became the best record of the debates.

Under what shared pen name did the authors of the Federalist Papers write?

Publius: the pen name hid the authors' identities while honouring Publius Valerius, an ancient Roman general.

Which proposal kept a one-chamber Congress in which every state had a single vote?

The New Jersey Plan: delegates rejected it on June 19 by seven states to three, and kept the rival Virginia Plan as the basis for debate.

Which 1215 English document's 'law of the land' promise inspired the Constitution's guarantee of due process?

Magna Carta: King John sealed it to avert civil war with rebel barons, promising that no free man would be imprisoned except by the law of the land.

The Three-Fifths Compromise let states count three-fifths of those enslaved for what purpose?

Representation in Congress: counting the enslaved, who could not vote, gave slave states extra seats and, through them, extra electoral votes.

What is the popular nickname of the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause?

The Elastic Clause: in 1819 the Supreme Court used it to let Congress charter a national bank, a power the Constitution never lists.

Which article of the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary?

The third: it creates only the Supreme Court and leaves every lower federal court for Congress to set up, which it first did in 1789.

Which amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures?

The Fourth: it answered writs of assistance, British general warrants that let tax collectors search colonists' property for untaxed goods.

Who presides over the Senate when a President is tried on impeachment charges?

The Chief Justice: John Roberts presided over Donald Trump's first trial in 2020, but Senator Patrick Leahy presided in 2021, once Trump had left office.

Which body holds the sole power of impeachment?

The House impeaches, then appoints "managers" to prosecute the case at the Senate trial.

How long do federal judges hold their offices under the Constitution?

During good behaviour: in practice that means life tenure, which lets judges rule without fear of losing their jobs.

Which crime does the Constitution say needs two witnesses to the same overt act to convict?

Treason: the framers set a high bar because factions had long used invented treason charges as weapons against their rivals.

When a president lets a bill die unsigned after Congress adjourns, what is that called?

A pocket veto: unlike a regular veto, Congress can't override it, because there is no returned bill to vote on again.

The 1933 repeal of Prohibition was approved by which method, used only that one time?

State ratifying conventions: repeal backers believed the temperance lobby still held sway over elected politicians, so they went around them.

Which is the only constitutional amendment ever to have been repealed?

The Eighteenth: its alcohol ban drove drinking into tens of thousands of speakeasies and made bootleggers such as Al Capone rich.

Which president, impeached in 1868 for firing his secretary of war, escaped removal by one Senate vote?

Andrew Johnson: the Senate voted 35 to 19 to convict, one short of two-thirds, as several senators broke with their own party to save him.

Which state provided the decisive 36th ratification of the women's suffrage amendment in August 1920?

A monument to the suffragists who won that vote stands in Nashville's Centennial Park.

A letter from which relative persuaded Harry Burn to cast the deciding vote for women's suffrage in 1920?

His mother: earlier that day Burn had voted with the amendment's opponents to table it.

The push to lower the voting age to 18 was driven largely by the draft for which war?

The slogan was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote".

Who was the first vice president appointed under the 25th Amendment, after Agnew resigned in 1973?

Gerald Ford: when Nixon resigned less than a year later, Ford became the only president never elected president or vice president.

Which former New York governor was confirmed as vice president in December 1974?

Nelson Rockefeller: he was dropped from the 1976 ticket in November 1975, and Kansas senator Bob Dole took the running-mate slot.

Which amendment limits a person to being elected president twice?

The Twenty-second: it exempted the sitting president, Harry Truman, yet he chose not to run again in 1952.

Which president's election to a third and fourth term prompted the constitutional two-term limit?

Franklin D. Roosevelt: his 1940 victory broke a two-term tradition that had stood since the first president stepped down.

The Sixteenth Amendment of 1913 gave Congress the clear power to levy what?

It overturned an 1895 Supreme Court ruling that had struck down a federal income tax.

Before the Seventeenth Amendment, who chose U.S. senators?

State legislatures: deadlocks could leave Senate seats empty for months or years, and one seat sat vacant from 1899 to 1903.

The rarely litigated Third Amendment restricts what practice?

Quartering soldiers in private homes: it answered Britain's colonial Quartering Acts, and it has never been the main basis of a Supreme Court decision.

The Twenty-third Amendment of 1961 granted presidential electors to which place?

Washington, D.C.: only states appointed electors, so until this amendment the capital's residents had no say in choosing the president.

What did the Twenty-fourth Amendment of 1964 outlaw in federal elections?

Poll taxes: two years later, the Supreme Court's Harper ruling banned them in state and local elections too.

The Twentieth Amendment moved the start of the president's term from March 4 to which date?

January 20: when that date falls on a Sunday, the president takes the oath privately and repeats it in public the next day.

Who tied the eventual winner in the 1800 electoral vote?

Aaron Burr: electors cast two votes without marking which was for president, so both men on his ticket got 73, which spurred the Twelfth Amendment.

Which Reconstruction amendment barred denying the vote on account of race?

The Fifteenth: its silence on sex split the women's movement into two rival groups in 1869.

Marbury vs. Madison (1803) established which principle of American constitutional law?

Judicial review: John Marshall turned a dispute over an undelivered judge's commission into the courts' power to strike down unconstitutional laws.

What does the Constitution require the president to update Congress on 'from time to time'?

The State of the Union: for over a century presidents submitted it only on paper, until Woodrow Wilson revived delivering it in person in 1913.

Which Federalist Papers author went on to lead the Supreme Court for its first six years?

John Jay: he quit in 1795 to become his state's governor, and later turned down a return to the post even after the Senate confirmed him.

Where has the original signed Constitution been displayed since 1952?

The National Archives, Washington: during World War II the parchment was kept at Fort Knox, from December 1941 until 1944.

Article V says no state may be deprived, without its consent, of what?

Equal suffrage in the Senate: two other shielded clauses, on the slave trade and direct taxes, expired in 1808, leaving this the only one.

Which Enlightenment thinker's ideas on separation of powers are cited in Federalist No. 47?

Montesquieu: Federalist No. 47 calls him 'the oracle' on the subject, though he had drawn his model from Britain's constitution.

Which Virginian who declined to attend the convention supposedly said he 'smelt a rat'?

Patrick Henry: the quip may be legend, but he did become a leading voice against adopting the Constitution.

Which constitutional protection stops someone who was acquitted from being tried again for the same crime?

Double jeopardy: the rule shields defendants from being worn down by repeated prosecutions and makes an acquittal final.

Which amendment protects 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms'?

The Second: not until 2008 did the Supreme Court first rule that it protects an individual's right to own a gun, apart from militia service.

Whose assassination spurred adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment on presidential disability?

John F. Kennedy: when he was killed, the vice presidency sat empty until 1965, because a vacancy then lasted until the next term began.

The Constitution lets officials be impeached for 'high Crimes and' what?

Misdemeanors: borrowed from English impeachment law, the phrase means abuse of public office, not petty crime.

Article VI forbids which requirement as a qualification for any U.S. office?

A religious test: in 1961 the Supreme Court also struck down Maryland's rule that officeholders declare a belief in God.

Which 1786–87 Massachusetts uprising convinced many leaders that the national government was too weak?

Shays' Rebellion: with no money from Congress for troops, Massachusetts crushed it with an army paid for by Boston merchants.

Article IV requires the United States to guarantee each state what form of government?

Republican: in 1849 the Supreme Court ruled that enforcing this guarantee is a political question for Congress and the president, not the courts.

Clarence Gideon's handwritten petition from prison won poor criminal defendants what right in 1963?

A free lawyer: Gideon was then retried with a court-appointed lawyer and acquitted.

Which amendment bans 'cruel and unusual punishments'?

The Eighth: in 1972 the Supreme Court used it to halt executions nationwide until states rewrote their death penalty laws.

Most of the first ten amendments now bind the states through which amendment's due process clause?

The Fourteenth: in 1833 the Supreme Court had ruled those amendments bound only the federal government, and incorporation through this later amendment changed that.

Where was the old national Congress sitting when the finished Constitution reached it?

New York City: Congress was then meeting there, and later that same month it voted to send the Constitution on to the states.

Which state's name is spelled one letter short on the signature page of the original Constitution?

Pennsylvania appears as 'Pensylvania', with a single n, which was an accepted alternative spelling in the 1700s. The Liberty Bell's inscription spells it the same way.

Where were the Constitution and Declaration of Independence locked away for safekeeping during World War II?

Fort Knox's bullion vault also sheltered a Gutenberg Bible and drafts of the Gettysburg Address during the war. The Declaration came out once, for the Jefferson Memorial's dedication in April 1943.

Which delegate did the 1787 Constitutional Convention unanimously elect as its presiding officer?

George Washington was chosen unanimously and, four months later, was the first to put his name to the finished document. The other delegates then followed state by state, in geographic order.

Which 1966 Supreme Court ruling makes police tell suspects in custody they may stay silent and see a lawyer?

Miranda v. Arizona did not free Ernesto Miranda. Arizona retried him in 1967 and convicted him a second time.

Which institutions, feared by the framers as 'factions', go unmentioned in the Constitution yet dominate elections?

Political parties were never part of the plan: the founders did not intend American politics to be partisan. Rival camps formed anyway during the 1790s.

The original Constitution was handwritten on which material, often wrongly said to be hemp paper?

Parchment is treated animal skin rather than paper. The popular claim that the charter was penned on hemp paper is a hoax.

Which president resigned in 1974, days after the 'smoking gun' tape emerged, rather than face likely impeachment?

Richard Nixon stepped down before any impeachment vote, so he was never actually impeached. Leaders of his own party had told him removal was all but certain.

Federalist No. 51 argues that no government would be necessary if men were what?

Angels would need no rulers, the essay reasons, so a government of flawed people needs checks. The same passage supplies the remedy: 'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.'

Which legal safeguard, suspended by Abraham Lincoln, does the Constitution guarantee except in rebellion or invasion?

Habeas corpus lets a prisoner make the government justify the detention before a judge. Roger Taney ruled that only Congress could suspend it, and the Lincoln administration did not comply.

Article II gives the president which title over the Army, the Navy and state militias in national service?

Commander in Chief gives the president ultimate authority over the forces but no military rank, so the office stays a civilian one. Since a 1947 law, the title has covered every branch of the armed forces.

Which New Yorker signed the Constitution alone after his state's two other delegates walked out of the convention?

Alexander Hamilton could sign, but New York had been unable to vote since its other delegates left in July. The charter was said to be approved by 'eleven states, and Colonel Hamilton.'

In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects which act of protest?

Burning the U.S. flag outside a 1984 party convention in Dallas had earned Gregory Lee Johnson a year in jail and a $2,000 fine. The justices sided with him by 5 votes to 4.

Witnesses who refuse to answer so as not to incriminate themselves are said to 'plead' which amendment?

The Fifth shields silence, not livelihoods. Witnesses who invoked it at 1950s hearings on communism often lost their jobs or union posts afterwards.

In the oath that Article II spells out word for word, a president swears to do what to the Constitution?

Preserve, protect and defend comes from the only oath whose exact words the document supplies. Its two other oath clauses specify no wording at all.

Article I reserves which military decision for Congress alone, a step not formally taken since World War II?

Declaring war was last done formally on June 5, 1942, against Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Since then Congress has authorised military action without a formal declaration.

What can Congress do with a two-thirds vote in both chambers after a president rejects a bill?

Congress can override the veto, but rarely manages to: fewer than one in ten presidential vetoes has been overturned. A successful override makes the bill law without the president's signature.

Which national task, repeated every ten years, does Article I describe as an 'actual Enumeration'?

The census was first taken in 1790, when federal marshals counted 3,929,214 inhabitants. The country's leaders suspected the true figure was higher.

Which proposal, sent to the states in 1972, was still three states short when its ratification deadline passed?

The Equal Rights Amendment was drafted by suffragists Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and first introduced in 1923. Congress stretched its deadline to 1982, and it still came up short.

Who may vote in the Senate only when its members are evenly split, as John Adams did 29 times?

The vice president presides over the chamber but otherwise has no vote there. John C. Calhoun even used his tie-breakers against his own president.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury trial in federal civil suits worth more than what sum, unchanged since 1791?

Twenty dollars is the figure written into the text in 1791, and it has never been adjusted for more than two centuries of inflation.

Which blueprint, put before the convention in May 1787, proposed two chambers with seats weighted by population?

The Virginia Plan set the agenda for the whole debate, and its three branches of government survived into the final text. Small states answered with a rival scheme to safeguard their interests.

Which former shoemaker from Connecticut introduced the compromise that gave every state two senators?

Roger Sherman is also the only person to sign all four great American state papers, from the Continental Association of 1774 to the charter drafted in 1787.

Which provision of Article VI binds the judges in every state, whatever their own state's constitution or laws say?

The Supremacy Clause makes the Constitution, federal laws and treaties 'the supreme Law of the Land', overriding any state law that conflicts with them.

Which Article I provision did the Supreme Court read broadly in 1824 to break a New York steamboat monopoly?

The Commerce Clause covers dealings 'among the several States', and Gibbons v. Ogden held that this reaches navigation too. New York had granted the monopoly to steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton and his partner.

Under Article IV, what must each state give to the public acts, records and court rulings of every other state?

Full faith and credit is why a judgment won in one state's court can be enforced in another, even when the second court disagrees with the result.

Which three-word phrase in Article II describes the Senate's role in approving treaties and presidential appointments?

Advice and consent sets two different bars: a treaty needs two-thirds of the senators present, while a nominee is confirmed by a simple majority.

Which import business did the Constitution bar Congress from outlawing until 1808, two decades after it was written?

The slave trade from abroad was outlawed on January 1, 1808, the first day the text allowed. The clause never used the word, speaking only of the 'importation of such persons'.

When government takes private land for a highway, what does the Takings Clause say the owner must receive?

Just compensation is the price of eminent domain, the government's power to take private property. The same clause adds a second limit: the taking must be for public use.

Besides religion, speech, the press and assembly, which freedom does the First Amendment spell out?

The right to petition means asking the government to redress a grievance. Colonists prized it: the Declaration of Independence complained that their petitions had been answered 'only by repeated injury'.

Article I forbids states to make anything except coins of which two metals legal tender for paying debts?

Gold and silver looked safer than paper: Continental currency had sunk so low during the war that it inspired the phrase 'not worth a continental'. The same sentence stops states minting coins at all.

Which 1819 Supreme Court case, sparked by a state tax on the national bank, confirmed that Congress has implied powers?

McCulloch v. Maryland produced one of the court's most quoted lines: 'the power to tax involves the power to destroy'. The state was barred from taxing the bank at all.

Which amendment reserves to the states or the people every power not handed to the federal government?

The Tenth has been called a 'truism' by the Supreme Court, because it only makes explicit what the rest of the document already implied about limited federal power.

Which 1857 Supreme Court ruling held that African Americans, enslaved or free, could not be U.S. citizens?

Dred Scott v. Sandford also struck down the Missouri Compromise, which had kept slavery out of the northern territories. An 1868 amendment undid its ruling on who could be a citizen.

What did Mary Beth Tinker and other Iowa students wear to school in 1965, leading to a landmark free-speech ruling?

Black armbands got the students suspended, though no disruption followed. The Supreme Court sided with them 7–2, saying pupils do not shed their rights 'at the schoolhouse gate'.

Which Supreme Court justice wrote in 1919 that free speech would not shield a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre?

Oliver Wendell Holmes never wrote 'crowded'. The popular version of his line adds that word and usually drops his own qualifier, 'falsely'.

Which president's seizure of the nation's steel mills during the Korean War was struck down by the Supreme Court?

Harry Truman took over the mills to head off a strike he feared would disrupt defence production. The court ruled that he needed authority from Congress to seize private property.

Which group's writers used pen names like 'Brutus' and 'Centinel' in the fight over ratifying the Constitution?

The Anti-Federalists lost the ratification fight but left their mark: their objections helped bring about the first ten amendments.

Which Latin-named kind of law, punishing acts that were legal when committed, does Article I forbid Congress to pass?

Ex post facto laws are banned twice over, once for Congress and again for the states. The rule also stops lawmakers from increasing the penalty for a crime after it was committed.

Article I lets Congress 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts' by granting what to authors and inventors?

Copyrights and patents may be granted only 'for limited Times', so perpetual ones are ruled out. It has been called the one clause that comes with its own built-in justification.

Constitution Day, observed across the United States each September 17, marks the anniversary of which 1787 event?

The document's signing by 39 delegates in Philadelphia ended four months of debate. Three members who had stayed to the end refused to add their names.

Which state's 1788 convention voted neither to ratify nor to reject the Constitution, holding out until November 1789?

North Carolina's delegates voted 184 to 84 to wait, largely because the text lacked a list of guaranteed rights. A second convention at Fayetteville approved it by 194 votes to 77.

Who insisted in 1841, after William Henry Harrison died in office, that he was president outright and not merely acting?

John Tyler took the presidential oath at once, and opponents mocked him as 'His Accidency'. His stand held as precedent but was not written into the Constitution until 1967.

Which clerk was paid $30 to engross the Constitution, handwriting the final copy that the delegates signed?

Jacob Shallus appears nowhere on the document, and his role stayed unknown until an investigation for its 150th anniversary in 1937.

Which New Jersey delegate, a future Speaker in Congress, was at 26 the youngest person to sign the Constitution?

Jonathan Dayton later invested heavily in land in Ohio, where the city of Dayton is named after him.

Which state governor refused to sign the Constitution in 1787, yet later became the nation's first attorney general?

Edmund Randolph wanted stronger protections for individuals. Within a year he had reversed himself, backing ratification at his own state's convention.

Which West Virginia senator wrote the 2004 rule that schools must teach the Constitution every September 17?

Robert Byrd attached the requirement to a 2004 spending bill. It covers every school that receives federal funds, and federal agencies as well.

Which city hosted the thinly attended 1786 meeting of five states whose report called for the Philadelphia convention?

Annapolis drew only a dozen delegates, who had come to discuss commercial barriers between the states. Their report asked for a broader convention the following May.

Article I lets Congress license private ships to attack enemy vessels by granting which documents?

Letters of marque turned a privateer's captures into lawful prizes. The United States never signed the 1856 Paris Declaration, by which dozens of countries renounced privateering.

Constitution Day officially shares its date and its name with which other observance?

Citizenship Day grew out of 'I Am an American Day', once held on the third Sunday in May. Congress moved it to September 17 in 1952.

Which kind of law, once used by Parliament to condemn named individuals without trial, does Article I forbid?

A bill of attainder is a legislature pronouncing someone guilty and fixing the punishment itself. Under Henry VIII, Parliament passed them to send notable figures to their deaths.