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Handout B: Constitution and Amendments

Handout B: Constitution and Amendments

The United States Constitution, 1789

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America …The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States… He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…

  1. Summarize these constitutional duties of the President.
  2. What is the militia?

The Tenth Amendment, 1791

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

  1. If a power is not given to the national government in the Constitution, who keeps it?

The Fourteenth Amendment, 1865

No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

  1. Put this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in your own words.