Preamble to the United States Constitution
The Preamble to the United States Constitution, beginning with the words We the People, is a brief introductory statement of the Constitution's fundamental purposes and guiding principles. Courts have referred to it as reliable evidence of the Founding Fathers' intentions regarding the Constitution's meaning and what they hoped the Constitution would achieve.
The preamble was mainly written by Gouverneur Morris, a Pennsylvania delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention held at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
Text
Drafting
The Preamble was placed in the Constitution during the last days of the Constitutional Convention by the Committee on Style, which wrote its final draft, with Gouverneur Morris leading the effort. It was not proposed or discussed on the floor of the convention beforehand. The initial wording of the preamble did not refer to the people of the United States; rather, it referred to people of the various states, which was the norm.In earlier documents, including the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, the Articles of Confederation, and the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognizing American independence, the word "people" was not used, and the phrase the United States was followed immediately by a listing of the states, from north to south. The change was made out of necessity, as the Constitution provided that, whenever the popularly elected ratifying conventions of nine states gave their approval, it would go into effect for those nine, irrespective of whether any of the remaining states ratified.
Meaning and application
The Preamble serves solely as an introduction and does not assign powers to the federal government, nor does it provide specific limitations on government action. No court has ever used it as a decisive factor in case adjudication, except as regards frivolous litigation.Judicial relevance
The courts have shown interest in any clues they can find in the Preamble regarding the Constitution's meaning. Courts have developed several techniques for interpreting the meaning of statutes and these are also used to interpret the Constitution. As a result, the courts have said that interpretive techniques that focus on the exact text of a document should be used in interpreting the meaning of the Constitution. Balanced against these techniques are those that focus more attention on broader efforts to discern the meaning of the document from more than just the wording; the Preamble is also useful for these efforts to identify the "spirit" of the Constitution.Additionally, when interpreting a legal document, courts are usually interested in understanding the document as its authors did and their motivations for creating it; as a result, the courts have cited the Preamble for evidence of the history, intent and meaning of the Constitution as it was understood by the Founders. Although revolutionary in some ways, the Constitution maintained many common law concepts, and courts deem that the Founders' perceptions of the legal system that the Constitution created are uniquely important because of the authority "the People" invested them with to create it. Along with evidence of the understandings of the men who debated and drafted the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention, the courts are also interested in the way that government officials have put into practice the Constitution's provisions, particularly early government officials, although the courts reserve to themselves the final authority to determine the Constitution's meaning. However, this focus on historical understandings of the Constitution is sometimes in tension with the changed circumstances of modern society from the late 18th century society that drafted the Constitution; courts have ruled that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of these changed circumstances. All of these considerations of the political theory behind the Constitution have prompted the Supreme Court to articulate a variety of special rules of construction and principles for interpreting it. For example, the Court's rendering of the purposes behind the Constitution have led it to express a preference for broad interpretations of individual freedoms.
Examples
An example of the way courts utilize the Preamble is Ellis v. City of Grand Rapids. Substantively, the case was about eminent domain. The City of Grand Rapids wanted to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell property in the city identified as "blighted", and convey the property to owners that would develop it in ostensibly beneficial ways: in this case, to St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic organization. This area of substantive constitutional law is governed by the Fifth Amendment, which is understood to require that property acquired via eminent domain must be put to a "public use". In deciding whether the proposed project constituted a "public use", the court pointed to the Preamble's reference to "promot the general Welfare" as evidence that "he health of the people was in the minds of our forefathers". "he concerted effort for renewal and expansion of hospital and medical care centers, as a part of our nation's system of hospitals, is as a public service and use within the highest meaning of such terms. Surely this is in accord with an objective of the United States Constitution: '* * * promote the general Welfare.On the other hand, courts will not interpret the Preamble to give the government powers that are not articulated elsewhere in the Constitution. United States v. Kinnebrew Motor Co. is an example of this. In that case, the defendants were a car manufacturer and dealership indicted for a criminal violation of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Congress passed the statute in order to cope with the Great Depression, and one of its provisions purported to give to the President authority to fix "the prices at which new cars may be sold". The dealership, located in Oklahoma City, had sold an automobile to a customer for less than the price for new cars fixed pursuant to the Act. Substantively, the case was about whether the transaction in question constituted "interstate commerce" that Congress could regulate pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Although the government argued that the scope of the Commerce Clause included this transaction, it also argued that the Preamble's statement that the Constitution was created to "promote the general Welfare" should be understood to permit Congress to regulate transactions such as the one in this case, particularly in the face of an obvious national emergency like the Great Depression. The court, however, dismissed this argument as erroneous and insisted that the only relevant issue was whether the transaction that prompted the indictment actually constituted "interstate commerce" under the Supreme Court's precedents that interpreted the scope of the Commerce Clause.
Interpretation
Aspects of national sovereignty
The Preamble's reference to the "United States of America" has been interpreted over the years to explain the nature of the governmental entity that the Constitution created. In contemporary international law, the world consists of sovereign states. A state is said to be "sovereign" if any of its ruling inhabitants are the supreme authority over it; the concept is distinct from mere land-title or "ownership." While each state was originally recognized as sovereign unto itself, the Supreme Court held that the "United States of America" consists of only one sovereign nation with respect to foreign affairs and international relations; the individual states may not conduct foreign relations. Although the Constitution expressly delegates to the federal government only some of the usual powers of sovereign governments, all such powers inherently belong to the federal government as the country's representative in the international community.Domestically, the federal government's sovereignty means that it may perform acts such as entering into contracts or accepting bonds, which are typical of governmental entities but not expressly provided for in the Constitution or laws. Similarly, the federal government, as an attribute of sovereignty, has the power to enforce those powers that are granted to it. The Court has recognized the federal government's supreme power over those limited matters entrusted to it. Thus, no state may interfere with the federal government's operations as though its sovereignty is superior to the federal government's ; for example, states may not interfere with the federal government's near absolute discretion to sell its own real property, even when that real property is located in one or another state. The federal government exercises its supreme power not as a unitary entity, but instead via the three coordinate branches of the government, each of which has its own prescribed powers and limitations under the Constitution. In addition, the doctrine of separation of powers functions as a limitation on each branch of the federal government's exercise of sovereign power.
One aspect of the American system of government is that, while the rest of the world now views the United States as one country, domestically American constitutional law recognizes a federation of state governments separate from the federal government, each of which is sovereign over its own affairs. Sometimes, the Supreme Court has even analogized the States to being foreign countries to each other to explain the American system of State sovereignty. However, each state's sovereignty is limited by the U.S. Constitution, which is the supreme law of both the United States as a nation and each state; in the event of a conflict, a valid federal law controls. As a result, although the federal government is recognized as sovereign and has supreme power over those matters within its control, the American constitutional system also recognizes the concept of "State sovereignty", where certain matters are susceptible to government regulation, but only at the State and not the federal level. For example, although the federal government prosecutes crimes against the United States, the general administration of criminal justice is reserved to the States. Notwithstanding sometimes broad statements by the Supreme Court regarding the "supreme" and "exclusive" powers the State and Federal governments exercise, the Supreme Court and State courts have also recognized that much of their power is held and exercised concurrently.