Judicial Branch and the Federal Bureaucracy: AP Gov Prep Webinar #4

Hi, my name’s Paul Sargent and welcome once again to the Bill of Rights Institute series webinars preparing you for the AP US Government and Politics exam. This is night four. We’ve been going for four nights and we’ve covered quite a lot of ground. We’ve talked about the principles behind American government, the formation of the Constitution. We’ve talked about the idea of federalism. We’ve looked at the legislative branch. We’ve looked at the executive branch. If for some reason you haven’t been following along with these webinars, you can go back and look at recorded versions of them and catch up on all of these things. Now there’s going to be one difference tonight. The difference is that I had to pre-record this. So I won’t be able to answer your questions right now, but I’ll tell you how you can get in touch with me if you have any further questions and some other places where you might be able to look to get your questions answered. But hopefully I’ll be able to give you as much information as I can and hopefully clarify some things that you’ve been learning about all year long in in your AP Government class. So without any further ado, let’s get started. This is our final branch of government or branch and a half of government, you might say. And and and so we’re going to get today into the judicial branch and the federal bureaucracy. Two very important parts. And I say one and a half because the judicial branch is of course one of the formal branches of government, but the bureaucracy because of the power that it has is is more and more seen as an its own branch of government, even though technically it’s not. But we’ll talk about all of that, so don’t get too worried about where we are. So before we get started, I just want to point out there are lots of resources on my website sargenotes.com. This is also where if you if you think that there’s something that I didn’t cover very well, you have further questions about it and whatnot, you can feel free to reach out to me. There’s a contact form on my website. Please feel free to ask me questions and I’ll try my best to get back to you and get an answer. And then of course, the Bill of Rights Institute has a ton of resources on their website that have to do with all kinds of information about government, but they also have incredible resources for the foundational documents and for the required Supreme Court cases that that are part of this course. So feel free use those web use those resources as much as you can as you’re getting ready for this exam. All right, so those of you who have been tuning in for the last couple of nights, you know that we are still working through one big idea and we’re going to kind of pull it together and close it up today. And that big idea is this. Because power is widely distributed and checks prevent one branch from usurping powers from the others, institutional actors are in the position

where they must both compete and cooperate in order to govern. And I’ve highlighted things that I think really sort of stand out on this. Power is widely distributed. We have a system of separation of powers that’s in place, which which spreads power out. We also have a system of federalism, which divides power between state and the federal governments. And so, you know, that that sort of spreads it out and they give different branches checks over other branches, thus further sort of dropping down the power level, you might think. It prevents them from usurping powers. It it sets it up so it’s very hard to take power away from one branch. Now last time we spent a lot of time talking about how the executive branch has expanded their power at the expense of Congress, but they haven’t really usurped power. They’ve simply found presidents have found different ways to use power sort of get around some of the constraints, causing Congress to react and causing the judicial branch to react and they’re all constantly reacting to one another, which brings me to the last part of this. They compete and cooperate in order to govern. The competition is there for a reason. Competition pits, as James Madison put it, ambition against ambition. So that ambitious politicians, ambitious leaders who want more power are put in direct competition with other ambitious leaders who want power. And that competition itself prevents one group from getting too much power. But they also have to cooperate because in order to govern, there needs to be cooperation between the legislative branch and the executive branch and the judicial branch in order for things to go smoothly. So these are the some the essential questions we’ve been working on and we’ve been answering them little by little each night. How do the branches of government compete and cooperate in order to govern? Good question. And to what extent have changes in the powers of each branch affected how responsive and accountable the national government is in the 21st century? That’s a harder question to answer because there’s a whole lot of opinion in there and a whole lot of conjecture and and and lots of other things. But tonight we’re going to get into a couple of topics. Our first one is the judicial branch. And so I bring you from the College Board enduring understanding 2.3. This is what they expect you to understand. The design of the judicial branch protects the Supreme Court’s independence as a branch of government and the emergence and use of judicial review remains a powerful judicial practice. So what does that all mean? Well, let’s take a look at this. All right, so I always like to start off with about the job. what is it that people do? What do you what do you need to know about who actually does this? Well, when we look at the the judicial system, I’m really going to focus on the Supreme Court, not the entire federal judicial system, although it is the rest of it does play a very large role.

There are nine justices on the Supreme Court. Nine’s a good number. It’s odd, so you can’t have a tie vote unless someone recuses themselves from a decision. In other words, just pulls themselves out of the decision because they have some sort of interest in the case. Uh For example, they might own stock in a company that’s part of a lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court. And so they may decide, “Hey, you know, I I have too too much at stake here or or I have too great of an interest in this or even I think it just might look bad because I own stock in this company to be ruling on whether what they’re doing is constitutional. And so I’m recusing myself. I’m deciding not to be a part of this this decision-making process.” Um So but generally speaking, you have nine justices on the Supreme Court. Nine’s also nice cuz it’s not too big. You know, there’s a variety of of opinions, but if you had like say 37 people on the Supreme Court, it would make things a whole lot more problematic. Nine is a good number. There are no constitutional qualifications. If you have been following the last couple of nights or if you’ve been following all throughout the year in your own government class, you know that there are constitutional qualifications for holding office in either of the in either of the two elected branches of the government. Here there are none. No qualifications listed in the Constitution. The justices are given lifetime terms. This means that once they get the job, they are they are able to keep that job for their entire lives without fear of getting fired or without fear of having their pay reduced or in any way being being attacked, you know, in a formal way. They certainly be attacked in the media and whatnot. Now this doesn’t mean that everybody has to stay on the bench in in the Supreme Court until they die. It is much more common for Supreme Court justices to retire at some point, but they have the they they’re the ones who decide whether they want to do this or not. The only thing that puts some sort of a check on on people who are going into the Supreme Court is the Senate’s confirmation process. Whenever a president nominates a Supreme Court justice, the Senate has to confirm them in order for them to take office. And so that puts some qualifications in into the whole process, although there’s no set list like there is anywhere else. It can certainly change. All right, moving to the next slide, we have the sources of judicial power. Now the main judicial power that you have to understand is the power of judicial review. And this is a very key concept because whenever you’re going to be writing about the judicial branch and their power, whenever you’re going to be answering questions about the power of the judicial branch, judicial review is like your default. You’ve got to go judicial review almost every time. This

is the power of the court to determine the constitutionality of laws. They have the ability to look at a law and decide whether or not that law complies with the Constitution or whether it violates the Constitution in some way. And so when they do this, they exercise an enormous amount of power because they can invalidate laws that have been agreed upon by Congress and the President of the United States. The other two branches together cooperated to make a law and the judicial branch then competes in order to in order to shut it down. Now I want to just answer one common question here because there is a common misconception, at least among my students, that part of the law making process involves the judicial branch. In other words, there’s there’s sort of a belief, I think, that Congress writes, votes, and passes a law. The president signs it, then it immediately goes to the Supreme Court where the justices read it over and then determine whether they think it’s okay. And if they give it the thumbs up, then it becomes law. Not true. Think of the Supreme Court as any other court. They don’t just show up one day and decide, “Hey, let’s do this today.” They hear cases that are brought to them, that are filed by people who have problems that need to be resolved. And when the Supreme Court has a case come in front of them that challenges the constitutionality of a law, then they can rule on that on that law. But, and there are many many cases where laws that are perhaps unconstitutional are passed, but are never challenged in court, and therefore the court system never has the opportunity to rule on them. So, they’re not a direct part of this. They have to have a case that comes up in order for them to rule on it. Um their judicial power is really brought to them by Article 3 of the Constitution. This is the shortest of the of the articles concerning the branches of government. Um it really doesn’t talk about a whole lot. It only creates one court, gives Congress the power of creating all other courts that it needs to. Um and it assigns to the Supreme Court a certain set of uh of cases which fall under its jurisdiction, its ability to rule on things uh directly. Um now, explanation of the judicial power comes from Federalist number 78. And Federalist number 78 was written by James Madison, as as you may recall, as a part of the ratification debate of the Constitution. The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists were fighting over whether whether to ratify this new Constitution. And so, um the the Federalists as a group were writing these Federalist papers to explain and justify lots of what they had done in the Constitution. Now, the Anti-Federalists had brought up the

possibility that a problem with the Constitution was that the judicial branch held an enormous amount of power. It was unelected, it had lifetime terms, it didn’t answer to anybody, and it could overrule the other two justices or the other two branches of government. And the concerns of the Anti-Federalists were that the judicial branch could impose not a reading of the Constitution, but their own personal ideas into the judgment process, and then override elected officials by unelected judges having Oh, no, unelected judges override. You get what I’m trying to say. Anyway, um so, in in Federalist number 78, James Madison came out and said, “Hey, look, the judicial branch is the least powerful branch of government. They They don’t have two of the most important powers that are out there. They don’t have the power of the purse, the money power, and they don’t have the power of the sword, the military power. They don’t have that at all. In fact, they don’t even have any way to enforce their own rulings. They’re going to rule on things, but they have to rely on the other branches of government to enforce those things for them. And so, the judicial branch cannot usurp too much power, cannot become too powerful of a force because it has no way of exerting its force over the other two branches without their compliance, without their going along with it. And then, in the case of Marbury versus Madison, the Supreme Court, ironically, affirmed its own power of judicial review. Because judicial review is not really given to them in the Constitution. It’s kind of there, and certainly James Madison in in Federalist 78 argues that judicial review exists, and this is a power of the judicial branch, but it doesn’t explicitly say it in the Constitution. And so, when when the case of Marbury versus Madison came up, and it’s an interesting case with a long story, but we don’t have time to tell the whole story, so go to the Bill of Rights Institute website and take a look at the story there. The Chief Justice, John Marshall, ruled that a law um the the Judiciary Act of 1787 was in violation of the Constitution, and thereby it asserted that the Supreme Court had the ability and the power to uh use judicial review to overrule the unconstitutional laws. And uh and so, it the Supreme Court basically gave itself um the power of judicial review. Now, if we move on here, um I I already talked about Federalist number 78. Please be sure that you understand this because um this is one of those required foundational documents. Um and I got ahead of myself a little bit there, too, with the next slide, Marbury versus Madison. Please be

familiar with this case. This is maybe the most commonly cited case on the AP Gov exam, at least in the old format. There’s a new format starting this year, so we’ll have to see. Okay, moving on. Um here’s how the Supreme Court goes about making their decisions. They really try to rely on what’s called precedent. Now, precedent is the way that similar cases have been ruled on in the past. Um in other words, court cases are built around the idea that if the if a court has ruled one way in a similar case, then it needs to continue to rule that way. So, if you go to law school or if you, you know, go into into a courtroom or even if you watch a pretty good court drama, um although they tend to shy away from this side of it and tend to go more with like the witness, you know. Um but but they will cite precedent. They’ll say, “Hey, you know what? This is very similar to this case, you know, which happened in 1976, or similar to this case, which happened in 2005. And um and so, therefore, since the courts ruled on those cases uh in a particular way, then you need to follow suit and and uh rule on this.” And both sides will bring up precedents that they think help build the case that they’re trying to make. The entire system, though, is built on uh the legal uh doctrine of what’s called stare decisis. Now, this is a Latin term. When you get into the court system, you know, finding a lot of Latin terms because, you know, that’s just what they do. And stare decisis uh literally means uh let the decision stand. It’s the doctrine that if there’s a precedent out there, then the precedent needs to be followed unless there are really compelling reasons to overturn it. Um and I have the picture here from uh Brown versus Board of Education, 1954, um a Supreme Court case that actually did overturn a previous Supreme Court case, Plessy versus Ferguson from 1896. If you recall, the Plessy decision had decided uh the Supreme Court had decided that separate but equal facilities were okay, which led to segregation throughout the South in the United States. Well, 1954, the Supreme Court looked at this. Now, had they followed stare decisis when the uh when when segregated schools in um in in uh Topeka, Kansas, sorry, blanked there for a second. Um when segregated schools in Topeka, Kansas, were being challenged, then they would have upheld it because they would have said, “Hey, you know what? Separate but equal. Separate schools, but everybody’s getting educated.” You know, there’s always a question of what equal means, but um at least, you know, there was some education. But the justices decided that no, it that times had changed, and that

this practice of segregation, that separating people, was in itself inherently unequal. They created an inequality by separating people, implying that some people were lesser than others. And so, they overruled that case. Um and went against the doctrine of stare decisis. All right, next slide. Now, the ideological changes that happen on the court are really important. And this is a very very important thing to understand. Presidents are going to go about and they’re going to appoint judges who share their ideologies. Um a president might only get in a four-year term one chance to put someone on the Supreme Court, either because someone dies or someone retires. Those are really the only two options there. I mean, there is the impeachment option for Supreme Court justices, but it’s never actually worked, so hasn’t been tried in nearly 200 years at this point. Um so, they appoint justices that are going to share their ideology, someone who is going to sort of carry their beliefs on. It’s the longest-lasting thing a president can do. But if a president gets multiple options opportunities to put justices on the Supreme Court, um Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, I mean, the guy was in office for uh you know, 12 years and and and and a month. Um but he had the opportunity almost create an entire Supreme Court. Um and uh you know, but you don’t get to stay in the presidency that long these days anyway, so doubtful that any two-term president could fill the entire Supreme Court. But you might get in an eight-year, if you serve two terms, eight years, you might get three, maybe even four appointments. And if those four appointments carry a president’s ideology, that that’s an enormous influence on what the court will be doing because these are lifetime terms. These people might be on the court for 30, 40 years. Um and so it really goes on for a long time. But it can change the ideological balance of the court because uh the if if someone who is a conservative appoints three or four conservative justices on the on the Supreme Court, then they might be replacing justices who had central moderate kind of views or maybe even liberal views. And now the court becomes more conservative. On opposite on the on the liberal side. If a liberal president appoints three or four I mean even two can pull it off, but three or four certainly makes a big difference. And it’s going to change the ideological balance. And then what will happen is that if the ideology changes, then people or those Supreme Court justices will be more willing to hear cases which will challenge old cases that were decided by a different ideology. And so you could have overturned rulings based on ideological differences. And that can establish new

precedents that have to be followed by lower courts for a very, very, very long time. So ideology plays a big part of um of this. And we’d all like to sit back and and and believe, hey, you know, here are these people that have been uh appointed and confirmed at the Supreme Court. They’re going to sit back. They don’t they’re not really they’re not really people in society. They’re going to rule as best they can, you know? They’re going to sit there and read the Constitution and say, “No, no, no, look, right here it says this.” And in the law it says this. But sometimes ideology can play into it. The way an individual views the world is going to influence how they interpret uh the way that laws should should be implemented or interpreted. But it’s also going to uh influence the way that they look at their own position in terms of trying to work with um you know, work with laws and and work with policies and things like that. So um there is a political side to the Supreme Court which is extremely important when understanding it. Now we move on. I understand that that there has have always been. I mean from the very beginning there have been questions about the legitimacy of the power of the Supreme Court. I mean look, it’s an unelected branch of government which is extremely insulated from the voters. Like there’s almost nothing voters can do to influence the Supreme Court in any way other than try and bring cases to it. Um but but so whenever there’s some sort of unpopular uh opinion that’s put out or unpopular decision that’s made, then all of a sudden there are calls for like, “Oh my gosh, is this is this legitimate? Do these should these people have this kind of power?” You know, the side that that won is going like, “Oh yeah, this is great.” So the debate has been ongoing since the very beginning of uh of our republic. But generally what happens is unpopular Supreme Court decisions are seen as being final. I I have here a picture of uh the Roe v. Wade decision, which among many areas of the country, among many people, is a very unpopular decision even today. In fact, recently with the ideological shift in the Supreme Court to a more conservative Supreme Court now that Donald Trump has put two uh justices on the Supreme Court, there are uh uh questions, there are suggestions that the court would be willing to hear a challenge to Roe v. Wade and that maybe with conservative ideologies on the Supreme Court, they might be willing to overturn it in some form or at least put uh make changes to it or something. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen in the future, right? There are ways though that other branches can change Supreme Court decisions. Now we’ve already talked about judicial

appointments. Um uh if we go back to the example of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excuse me. When he took office and started to implement the New Deal policies to fight the Great Depression, just go with it if you’re not uh a big uh you you don’t really know your American history too well, just kind of like, okay, smile and nod. Um the Supreme Court began overturning uh overturning some of these laws that were major components of the New Deal um due to conflicts with the Constitution itself. Um and so uh and so you know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was kind of sitting there going like, “Uh this is not a good thing.” Now he proposed simply making the Supreme Court larger kick it up to like 13 judges and then he could appoint, you know, four more and then he’d have a majority on the Supreme Court. That wasn’t so popular, but as I stated earlier, the guy was in office for a long time. And so being in office for I mean, he was elected to a fourth term, served three, died very early in his fourth term. Um he had the ability he had the time and thus the ability to appoint a number of justices who then started upholding um many of the New Deal policies. So judicial appointments definitely can change court decisions. Legislation can also change court decisions. If Congress passes a law and the Supreme Court finds it unconstitutional, usually it’s it’s part of the law that’s unconstitutional. Um then the then the legislature can uh you know, the Congress can simply introduce a new law which changes the part that the Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional. And then they pass that and the policy for the most part goes back into effect um just like it was before and then waits for another court challenge and another uh process to get to the Supreme Court. And the process to get to the Supreme Court by the way can take years. So this is not like uh hey, it’s going to happen next week, so brace yourself kind of thing. Um and then there’s also uh implementation. Um and and implementing Supreme Court uh decisions is always a question because the Supreme Court as I stated before, James Madison said had no money and had no military. So they can’t really carry out their decisions. They rely on the executive branch of government to carry out to implement the decisions of the Supreme Court. And uh if the if the executive branch decides not to do that not to do it quite well or if it’s something that they overturn in a state and the state decides just not to go along with what the Supreme Court said, there’s a limited amount of stuff that Supreme Court can do. So it really can hinder their ability to

to to keep those decisions going. All right, moving on. There Now what is the role branch in the policy-making process? I mean, the whole system of of the three branches of government is set up to create public policy. To create this uh set of things that that that make the government function the way it does. To make uh things legal, illegal, allowable, unallowable, make programs run, all of that. Justices really see themselves in two roles. Um and usually they find themselves in one in in a pretty permanent place in one of these two roles. Some are favor judicial activism. Using the power of the court to overturn and rule on laws as a way of creating policy. As a way of changing the way things are done without having to go through the legislature and the president. Uh good example of this. I have a picture of uh is Ernesto Miranda who in the famous Miranda versus Arizona case um was uh you know, took it to the Supreme Court that his conviction for some uh let’s just say some pretty bad stuff uh should be overturned because part of the case at least a great majority of the case depended on his confession and he had never been told that he had the right under the Fifth Amendment not to speak at all. And so not knowing that he didn’t have to talk, he talked and he confessed to this and uh and then he was of course convicted of it. Um and so when the Supreme Court ruled that, “Hey, um the you know, citizens have to be or anyone really you don’t you don’t have to be a citizen. Um has to be informed of their rights, their right to remain silent. You’ve seen this in police shows all kinds of things get arrested. Um that they have to be informed of these rights, they said that Miranda’s um conviction had to be had to be undone and and they had to send the case back down to the to its original court to rehear the case without using his own testimony as part of it. Now this is judicial activism because it now meant that the Supreme Court was telling all police uh forces in the United States that they had to take this extra step in the criminal, uh, prosecution that or or arrest procedure. They had to inform uh someone is being arrested that they had the right to remain silent. And if for some reason they forgot to do this or they, you know, they didn’t really do it very well or whatever, then anything that the the the, uh, the the the person is arrested says,

um, is inadmissible in court. So, it put an extra hindrance on them and that was seen as judicial activism because they were changing policy or changing the way things were done. Now, other justices see the role, uh, justice on the Supreme Court as using judicial restraint. This is almost like being a referee. They don’t try and change the way things are done, but they’re when a case comes up that clearly violates the Constitution, they’re going to throw the flag out. They’re going to blow the whistle and they’re going to say, “No, can’t do that one.” But other than that, their role is going to be very limited, only ruling on the constitutionality of things, not trying to push an agenda or not trying to create change, um, and and become another branch of or another, uh, policy-making branch of the government. All right. Now, next we have, of course, checks on the court. Remember, one of the things that we’re really looking at here is this idea of competition and cooperation to make policy. Um, and so, every branch has checks on it. And here’s some checks on, uh, the Supreme Court. Now, some of these we’ve already gone over, so I’m going to move through them a little bit quickly. Congressional legislation can obviously change what the, uh, uh, what the court is, you know, what what a court decision means or it can simply, uh, invalidate a Supreme Court decision if the same law is passed with just slightly different wording. In a more extreme situation, constitutional amendments can be made to change court decisions. If a court rules something unconstitutional and then the Constitution is amended to say, “Yes, this is how it happens.” the court can rule that unconstitutional because by definition, an amendment is part of the Constitution. So, it’s put in there. Great example of this, uh, in, uh, the middle of the 19th century in the Dred Scott versus Sanford decision um the uh, Supreme Court decided, um, that slaves, uh, did were considered to be property and did not have the right or the ability to, uh, to challenge, uh, to challenge, uh, a white person in the court system. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution didn’t absolutely overturn the Dred Scott decision, but it did in practicality by abolishing slavery. So, therefore, slaves didn’t exist. So, therefore, the Dred Scott decision was nullified by the fact that none that no one fit into that description existed in the United States anymore, at least in any sort of legal way. Judicial appointments, uh, provide a check on the court because they can change the ideologies we’ve talked about. Lack of implementation can really be a check on the court. Andrew Jackson is the great example of this because Andrew Jackson, uh, put out the order that he was going to

move uh uh, Cherokee tribes, I believe it was Cherokee tribes, uh, from the state of Georgia to the Oklahoma territory. Um, tribes challenged that in court. Um, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of, uh, the Cherokee saying that this Indian removal was not going to happen. And, um, Andrew Jackson said, “Well, let the Supreme Court’s army stop me.” And he went ahead and moved these people. And thus, we had the Trail of Tears. So, if there’s no implementation, then the Supreme Court decision kind of becomes, you know, not that, uh, valid or not that uh well, it just doesn’t happen. And then, of course, uh, Congress can change court jurisdiction. They can change, um, the the area that a court is in charge of. They can change the types of cases that come to courts, um, and and they can sort of mess with the system because so little of it is actually put out in the Constitution itself in Article 3, um, that Congress has the authority to do a lot in order to sort of mess with the system a little bit. All right. So, that’s basically the majority of what you need to know about the, uh, about the judicial branch. Um, now, obviously, I didn’t cover everything, but, you know, we’re trying to move in a little bit of time here and trying to move through the main points. Um, so, uh, you know, look look back over these things and if again, if you have any questions through this stuff, please feel free to contact me or to look on my website or the Bill of Rights Institute website or there’s lots of other websites out there you can use, um, which have information to clarify this sort of thing. All right. Now, moving on to the bureaucracy, we next have enduring understanding 2.4. Um, and that is the federal bureaucracy is a powerful institution implementing federal policies with sometimes questionable accountability. I like the way they put that last part, sometimes questionable accountability, because accountability is like being able to be held responsible for what it is that you do and maybe being penalized for doing something which you shouldn’t. And when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, that is sometimes questionable because sometimes they’re not really held accountable. Um, and sometimes it’s just really hard to be held accountable. And so, to to understand what the bureaucracy is, um, I I sort of just put this up here, you know, you go down in DC and you start walking around the streets in sort of around and near Congress, um, down like Constitution Avenue and you see lots of buildings like the Department of State. And well, you don’t see a Department of Defense because that’s over at at the Pentagon. But there’s lots of these these signs out there in these different departments and agencies and that’s what the federal bureaucracy really is. All right. So, next,

what is the bureaucracy? Big question that I get every single year and I get it over and over and over from my students because it is something that’s kind of difficult to get inside of your head. So, I’m going to try and simplify it for you right here. All right. First of all, understand the bureaucracy is part of the executive branch. The executive branch is given the, uh, given the job in the Constitution of faithfully executing the laws. Um, that doesn’t mean just like killing them. That means going through and putting them into effect, making them happen. And since they only put in a single executive into the into the Constitution, they allow for the appointment of others and the creation of other offices and things like that because they knew it was going to happen. Bureaucracies existed around the world. Um, but there was nothing like specific that was stated in the Constitution. So, they are part of the executive branch because obviously, the president can’t do all the work of government by himself. It consists of a large number of departments and agencies, um, with various acronyms and letters and all of that that, uh, you know, that do all kinds of different things. But they all work to carry out the laws passed by Congress. Congress passes a law to, uh, to create a new national park, well, someone has to go create the park. Someone has to go and, you know, make the trails in the park. Someone has to go and work the park. Someone has to clean the bathrooms in the park, you know? All this stuff has to be done. And so, they do the work of, uh, of the of carrying out the laws. So, basically, as I like to put it, if you think of the federal bureaucracy, think of all the people who have careers working for the federal government. That’s really what it is. Careers meaning they’re not elected, um, and there are a few a few exceptions. Um, the the staff that works for individual congressmen are not part of the federal bureaucracy, um, but, uh, you know, outside of that, well, clerks that work for Supreme Court justices. But outside of that, pretty much everyone works for the Supreme Court or for the, uh, Sorry. Everyone works for the federal government is probably fitting into the bureaucracy. Sometimes people like to separate the military out as sort of separate from the bureaucracy. Um, if you want to do that, that’s fine. If you want to include them in the bureaucracy, that’s fine, too. As long as you get in your head that that’s what we’re talking about. Okay. Moving on, next slide. So, here’s what they they do. Now, this is an extremely simplified thing because let me tell you, if you really try to get into exactly what the bureaucracy does, your head is going to explode because they do so much by so many departments, by so many agencies, sub-departments, sub-agencies administrations government corporations, like all these things. They do so much work that it’s

absolutely impossible to encompass it in one brain unless this is like your full-time job. Okay? Here’s what they basically do. First of all, they’re in charge of writing and enforcing regulations. Lots of times, what happens is laws that come out of Congress tend to be fairly broad, um, and tend to be a little bit vague because what you’re dealing with in Congress is you’re dealing with, uh, what political scientists call policy generalists. In other words, these people know kind of what they believe in terms of policies, but as you get more and more and more specific about things, then they become less and less sure of where they stand. For example, one of the big issues of the day is border security. Okay? Now, people who are in Congress are going to believe a few things about that. They might believe whether or not they they favor restricted immigration or whether they favor a more open immigration policy. They may further look at the idea of a border wall and decide whether they believe that is an effective deterrent to illegal immigration or whether that is an expensive ineffective deterrent to illegal immigration. When you get down to the question of the height of a border wall, then people become a little bit less sure about all of this and you know, I don’t know how tall is how how tall is right and then you know, where exactly should it be placed? How exactly long should it be made? How you know, what should it be made of? You know, then people start going like and you know, they start to lose a little bit. So, what they do is they Congress will write a more generally worded laws and then they’ll give it over to the federal bureaucracy to implement and then the federal bureaucracy will go through and create the much more specific regulations guidelines and everything else and then they’ll go about enforcing those guidelines. Now, this gives them a lot of power because they have the ability to make decisions about sort of like what exactly the law means and then they go about enforcing what exactly the law means. And and then that becomes in effect law until or unless Congress goes through and changes the law in order to prevent what the bureaucracy is doing, but more on that later. They are able to issue fines if people violate the law you know, for you know, sending in your taxes late, you’re going to pay some sort of a fine for doing that. Sometimes they testify before Congress whenever Congress wants to wants to use its power of legislative oversight to make sure that the laws are being implemented the way they want to. They’ll call people in from the bureaucracy and people in the bureaucracy will

will then testify before Congress and then they work through these things called issue networks and iron triangles. Now, real brief definition of the two. An iron triangle well, both both are driven around the ideas there’s only a limited number of people who really care about most about any specific policy. Especially if it’s not one of like the the big huge policies being played out in the media and on the campaign trail and all of that, but you know, if it comes to the uh you know, the the limitation on the number of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for example, then you know, that’s not going to be a major campaign issue because most people most voters probably don’t care too much about that and they don’t understand the difference between having let’s say 100 or you know, 150 oil rigs out there. And and so what happens is you get this small group of people whether it’s an issue network, which is sort of a loosely based sort of conglomeration of people who are interested in this particular piece of legislation or iron triangles where you have a congressional committee that creates the legislation about something and the government agency that is going to implement that that law and then any sort of special interest group that represents people or businesses or groups that are going to be affected by the law. They’re going to tend to be the ones that are going to sit down and talk through law and policy in order to really make it because they’re the ones who really are who really care about that particular thing. More on that when we get to interest groups later in this series. Okay, so getting in the next slide. We have seen over time that there have been efforts to improve the bureaucracy. Now, the bureaucracy started off very very very small and the federal government really had you know, smaller a smaller level of work to do than it does today. When we were first forming the country, there you know, there wasn’t that much to do. We weren’t exactly a world power with a nuclear threat and seen as the leader of the free world as we are today. You know, things have changed. In the early part of the 19th century, the practice of patronage really began to be used widely whereby political offices, government jobs were given to people as a form of recognition for their involvement in campaigns. Political supporters were expected that if the president they supported won the presidency, that then they would get some sort of cushy, well-paying, easy

government job that would allow them to draw a nice paycheck, make a nice living and not have to work all that hard. Even even if something that they really knew nothing about, but they got it because they helped out on the campaign. And this proved problematic as the country grew larger and as you know, a president was assassinated over it. And so Congress went in and created what’s called the merit system and this is kind of what the bureaucracy is based on today. It’s comprised of a professional civil service with with a hiring based on people’s qualifications. So, in theory and I’m I know you’re going to have people argue that this doesn’t that there is certainly some patronage still in the in the civil service, but people who are employed in the civil service are employed for careers. They’re going to make their career working in the federal government and they’re going to get the jobs that they have based on their experience, their education, their qualification, their background, all of that. They are going to be qualified individuals who are going to be hired. So, hiring’s not based on who you support in a political election, but on what skills you bring to the table whether from outside the federal government or from inside the federal government that can sort of you know, help make things better. So, bureaucrats are career professionals and it’s very hard to fire these people because and they have to be protected, you know, there are certainly downsides to overprotecting employees from being fired, but in a political environment, certainly what we don’t want is for an administration to come in and simply you know, go through and have everyone you know, look at everyone’s party affiliation that works in the federal government and fire everyone who works or who’s affiliated with the opposite party of the president. We don’t want that because you lose a lot of expertise. And so these career professionals are going to work for throughout their career for the betterment of the United States within their area of expertise. And so because they’re so specialized, they have increased expertise and they work within specific areas. People who work let’s say in the State Department may start working on State Department policy for a specific country. they’ll get very detailed information and they’ll get very knowledgeable about that country over the years and maybe expand into a larger region of countries that they’ll get information that they’ll know and they’ll know these countries very well. They’ll know their policies, their leaders, their political climate, etc. etc. etc. And so they bring to the table immense expertise here. And the whole goal of this is that these agencies are

going to be politically neutral. That they’re not going to simply be carrying out what the president’s what the president promised on the campaign trail, but they’re going to be doing their jobs the best they can for the good of the country is the idea. Right? But they also bring with it a lot of power. So, if we move on, we see this. Because here’s why some political scientists, in fact, I would venture to say many political scientists say the bureaucracy is another branch of government. And there’s really a few big ideas here. The first is bureaucratic discretion. As I said, most laws that are passed by Congress are fairly generalized and they tend to have some vague language makes it easier to pass. Don’t have to get too deep into all of the details. The more details you put into a bill, the more likely it is people have reasons to not vote for it. And so then a lot of discretion is given over to the bureaucracy. A good example of this is the Internal Revenue Service. Internal The IRS is in charge of collecting taxes. They check to make sure that people pay the taxes that they are supposed to pay within the rules that have been passed by Congress. And when they see things that look abnormal, when they when it looks like people may have like pushed the rules a little too much or fudged their records or something like that, then they can decide to audit that person or that corporation or whatever. And what that means is they’re going to go in and they’re going to do an intense look at all of the financial records that they can find and and really kind of like take a real close investigation into this person’s um you know, taxes. Um now, how do they decide who to audit? Bureaucratic discretion. They get to decide what would constitute an audit, how much uh manpower they should put behind an audit, who they should audit, you know. And so that that gives them a lot of power and every bureaucrat every bureaucratic agency has the ability um to to make decisions like this. They also have rule-making authority because within those vague guidelines which are put into laws, there’s a whole lot of um ambiguity. And so then in order to implement laws, they have to make rules that um are going to make the laws work. So, here’s an example. Um after 9/11, security at the uh at the nation’s airports was increased. Um the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, was um uh what was was put in charge of uh of having these checkpoints. Uh and checkpoints had existed in airports, but they became much much more um

uh you know, stringent after 9/11. Um and so then they got to decide like, “Okay, well, you know, what is it that we’re going to look for? How are we going to look at people? Um what things are we not going to allow people to carry on airplanes? What are we not going to allow people to check on airplanes?” And so then we saw this series of very very long lines and and people’s complaints and you know, you you bring in a shampoo bottle which is a quarter of an ounce larger than the size that they’ve said that they’ve told you you can bring on. Um and you know, all these regulations that they’ve decided on which affect the traveler and affect the times and uh you know, affect the wait times to get in and all of that. And so then in response to that, the TSA decided they were going to have a precheck. You see this here. And those people who who uh travel frequently can enroll in this precheck thing and they go through and they’re sort of vetted ahead of time. Um and and if they’re seen as not security threats, they’re kind of given the ability to bypass the line in a lot of ways. Um and so that’s rule-making authority. Okay, we got to keep moving because we are running short on time here. Um now, I took this straight from the College Board website um and uh and and I don’t really know exactly to what extent you need to know these agencies, but these are the agencies which were are specifically mentioned by the College Board um in this course. And so um take a little bit of time just to be familiar with a little bit about what they do. A lot of times, the names of the agencies are not all that creative. They’re going to be exactly what they are. Homeland Security is going to be in charge of the security of the United States. You know, Department of Transportation, guess what? Transportation. Veterans Affairs Education. So, go through and and familiarize yourself with these agencies just so that you have um some idea of kind of what they’re in charge of. Um and I wouldn’t worry about getting too deep into sub-agencies and all of that, but familiarity I think is is the key here, not in-depth knowledge. Um moving on, checks on their powers. And this is where we always like to end up. How do we check the power of the federal bureaucracy? If it’s so big, it makes so many rules, it implements all these decisions, how can they keep you know, who’s there to who’s there to make sure that they’re doing things right? Well, Congress can put a check on their power through oversight hearings. Here you have uh members of the National Security Agency who uh after uh Edward Snowden had come forth and said the National Security Agency was collecting information and communication on all Americans and all of our communication data. Um Congress had started to hold hearings about you know, how did this happen and you know, why are we doing this and all of this? And so members of the National Security

Agency came before Congress to try and justify what they were doing and try and talk about why it was necessary um and and bring up examples of hey, you know, we prevented this from happening because we were able to sift through all the data and all of that. So, oversight hearings uh are important for Congress because A, they’re televised and B, if Congress finds problems with what they hear at oversight hearings, then they’re more likely to pass a new law which would then regulate what the uh what the bureaucratic agency is doing for that. And so congressional oversight on the next slide here, um ensures that laws are being implemented as intended. Um and and they really have a couple methods of oversight. Uh one is the hearings um and it can be members of the bureaucracy. It can be people who are maybe affected by bureaucracy policy. In this case, just recently um the head of Facebook was brought in front of Congress to testify about Facebook’s role in um in in uh allowing uh Russian uh tampering with the 2016 election um and maybe even uh maybe even helping that along, bringing up the question of whether Congress needed to put more regulations in place and then give them to bureaucratic agency to further regulate social media. Um and then Congress also has the power of the purse. If an agency is doing something that Congress uh doesn’t approve of, Congress can decrease or in a really extreme case, eliminate the funding for that agency altogether. And so this curtails the power of the president as well because the president works through the bureaucracy to carry out policy. Um and so if Congress is is pulling back money or Congress is holding hearings and it comes out and you know, and the president’s involved in what whatever they’re talking about, then that can pull back presidential power. On the next slide, we go to the president himself because there is presidential authority involved here. Presidents are in charge of appointing the department and agency heads. All of those are are appointed positions. Now, everyone who works below a certain level are the career uh are the career uh bureaucrats, but the top levels um are are appointed positions. So, the presidents are going to appoint people who they feel will carry out policies along with promises that were made on the campaign trail. And so they can direct the bureaucracy to carry out functions in line with what the president believes. All right, so they push that down. Okay, well, your your agency needs to start doing this because that’s what I told people on the campaign trail. The more though that they check to see if the if the people working in the agencies are carrying thing out things out the way they’re supposed to be

carrying things out, the less efficient the agencies become because typically it involves paperwork and reports and um and and you know, little investigations or interviews or things like that. And all the time the people are people in bureaucracy spend filling out these papers and and making sure that that they’re you know, showing that they’re doing the right thing, the less time they have to spend on their actual uh jobs. But, these are the conflicts that we have talked about. So, that’s sort of a quick overview of the bureaucracy and and a quick overview of the judicial branch here. And that rounds out our uh look at the branches of government. So, uh in this webinar, episodes two, three, and four now have looked at the branches of government and their role in making policy. We’ve looked at how these branches um cooperate, how these branches um uh also compete in order to create policy, how they all have this system where power is balanced and different branches of government have checks on the other branches of government. Um and so I’m hoping that you guys really sort of see the big picture here um and it is a complicated picture and almost the more you try to explain, the more complicated it becomes because it is so incredibly intricate. But understand the basics first and then pull down and understand more specific stuff beyond that. And so finally, I just want to highlight what’s coming next. Tomorrow night, Friday night, number uh what are we at? Number five in our series here, our webinar series, tomorrow night we will take a look at civil liberties in the United States. So, until then, if you have any questions from tonight’s uh broadcast, please feel free to contact me uh on my website sargenotes.com um or to go to the Bill of Rights Institute and on their website and take a look at the resources they have there. Um, I’ll be back tomorrow night and uh, we can continue this conversation. I hope you’re finding these webinars helpful. I hope you’re getting ready for this AP exam. I’m sure the people who are watching this, people are making the best use of this. You guys are going to do great and we’re getting close. So, just keep going. You’re going to make it, okay? So, that’s all I have for you tonight. Have a great night and I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care.