English for Law Students

The original Constitution contained no bill of rights or list of guarantees for citizens or states. Pressed by opponents during the ratification debate, supporters of the Constitution promised early enactment of amendments to remedy this omission. The resulting ten amendments, drawn up by the first Congress and ratified December 15, 1791, are a basic charter of liberties that limits the reach of government. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion, preventing the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedoms of speech, press, peaceable assembly, and petition. Other amendments secure the rights of personal property and fair trial and prohibit arbitrary arrest, questioning, or punishment.

Rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights are not necessarily denied. In fact, subsequent amendments, legislative enactments, and judicial rulings have enlarged citizens' rights to include the rights of citizenship, of privacy, of voting, and of “equal protection of the laws”.

Text 3 Separate Branches, Shared Powers

The Constitution not only delineates Congress's powers but distinguishes them from those of the other two branches. For all practical purposes, senators and representatives, while in office, are prohibited from serving in other federal posts; those who serve in such posts are in turn forbidden from serving in Congress. This prevents any form of cabinet government in which key executive officials also sit in legislative chambers.

In fact, governmental powers are interwoven, even if the branches are separate. The Constitution vests Congress with “all legislative powers,” but these powers cannot be exercised without involvement by the president and the courts. The same interdependency applies to executive and judicial powers. The Constitution created, not a system of separate institutions performing separate functions, but separate institutions that share functions so that “these departments be so far connected and blended as to give each a constitutional control over the others.”

Even in lawmaking, Congress does not act alone. The president can convene one or both houses of Congress in special session. Although unable to introduce legislation directly, the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information on the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient”. The president also has the power to veto congressional enactments. Within ten days (excluding Sundays) after a bill or resolution has passed both houses of Congress, the president must sign or return it. To overrule a presidential veto, a two-thirds vote is required in each house.

Implementing laws is the duty of the president, who is enjoined by the Constitution to take care that they are faithfully executed. The president is the head of the executive branch and has the power to appoint “officers of the United States”, with the Senate's advice and consent. While Congress sets up the executive departments and agencies, outlining their missions by statute, chief executives and their appointees set the character and pace of executive activity. Moreover, Congress has power to impeach or remove civil officers for treason, bribery, or “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In diplomacy and national defense, traditional bastions of royal prerogative, the Constitution apportions powers between the executive and legislative branches. Following tradition, presidents are given wide discretion in such matters: they appoint ambassadors and other envoys, they negotiate treaties, and they command the country's armed forces.

Yet here, too, functions are intermeshed. Like other high-ranking presidential appointees, ambassadors and envoys must be approved by the Senate. Treaties do not become the law of the land until they are ratified by the Senate. Although the president may dispatch troops, only Congress has the power of formally declaring war.

Text 4 Democracy in America

The defects and weaknesses of a democratic government may readily be discovered; they can be proved by obvious facts, whereas their healthy influence becomes evident in ways which are not obvious and are, so to speak, hidden. A glance suffices to detect its faults, but its good qualities can be discerned only by long observation. The laws of the American democracy are frequently defective or incomplete; they sometimes attack vested rights, or sanction others which are dangerous to the community; and even if they were good, their frequency would still be a great evil. How comes it, then, that the American republics prosper and continue?

In the consideration of laws a distinction must be carefully observed between the end at which they aim and the means by which they pursue that end; between their absolute and their relative excellence. If it be the intention of the legislator to favor the interests of the minority at the expense of the majority, and if the measures he takes are so combined as to accomplish the object he has in view with the least possible expense of time and exertion, the law may be well drawn up although its purpose is bad; and the more efficacious it is, the more dangerous it will be.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority; because an aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority. It may therefore be asserted, as a general proposition, that the purpose of a democracy in its legislation is more useful to humanity than that of an aristocracy. This, however, is the sum total of its advantages.

No political form has hitherto been discovered that is equally favorable to the prosperity and the development of all the classes into which society is divided. These classes continue to form, as it were, so many distinct communities in the same nation; and experience has shown that it is no less dangerous to place the fate of these classes exclusively in the hands of any one of them than it is to make one people the arbiter of the destiny of another. When the rich alone govern, the interest of the poor is always endangered; and when the poor make the laws, that of the rich incurs very serious risks. The advantage of democracy does not consist, therefore, as has sometimes been asserted, in favoring the prosperity of all, but simply in contributing to the well-being of the greatest number.

Text 5 George Washington

George Washington had been the obvious choice to be the first president of the United States, and indeed, many people had supported ratification of the Constitution on the assumption that Washington would be the head of the new government. By all measures, Washington proved himself a capable, even a great, president, helping to shape the new government and leading the country skillfully through several crises, both foreign and domestic.

Washington, like many of his contemporaries, did not understand or believe in political parties, and saw them as fractious agencies subversive of domestic tranquillity. When political parties began forming during his administration, and in direct response to some of his policies, he failed to comprehend that parties would be the chief device through which the American people would debate and resolve major public issues. It was his fear of what parties would do to the nation that led Washington to draft his Farewell Address.

The two parties that developed in the early 1790s were the Federalists, who supported the economic and foreign policies of the Washington administration, and the Jeffersonian Republicans, who in large measure opposed them. In foreign affairs, both sides wanted the United States to remain neutral in the growing controversies between Great Britain and France, but the Federalists favored the English and the Jeffersonians the French.

Washington set out his vision of what would make the United States a truly great nation. He called for men to put aside party and unite for the common good. The United States must concentrate only on American interests, and while the country ought to be friendly and open its commerce to all nations, it should avoid becoming involved in foreign wars. The United States must “act for ourselves and not for others”.

Many Americans, especially in subsequent generations, accepted Washington's advice as gospel, and in any debates between neutrality and involvement in foreign issues would invoke the message as dispositive of all questions. Not until 1949, in fact, would the United States again sign a treaty of alliance with a foreign nation.

Text 6 I Have a Dream

(Martin L. King)

There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges¹.

But there is something I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as I evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge² that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for whites only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No. We are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you come here out of excessive trials and tribulation³. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi; go back to Alabama; go back to South Carolina; go back to Georgia; go back to Louisiana; go back to the slums and ghettos of the northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can, and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! ...

Notes:

^1. until the bright day of justice emerges (до тех пор), пока справедливость не восторжествует в один прекрасный день;

^2. pledge, n публичное обещание лидера партии придерживаться определенной политики;

^3. trials and tribulation испытания и беды

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