Legislative branch

2.1 - Congress intro

• Bicameral legislature: two houses

• Senate: equal representation of states

  • 2 senators per state (100 total)

  • More mature house

  • Have to be 30 (older than House so more mature)

  • 6 year terms with no term limits (longer than House because insulated from public pressure)

  • More constitutional responsibility

  • Senators are less connected to the people they represent (have to represent whole state even in large states)

    • Deal more with big issues rather than specific ones

  • Unlimited debate because less people

    • Filibuster: senators talk a bill to death, can only be stopped with a supermajority cloture vote

• House of Representatives: representation by population

  • 435 representatives (capped by law)

  • All states guaranteed at least one no matter how small

  • Figure out how many each state gets through census

  • Have to be 25 (younger than Senate)

  • 2 year terms with no term limits (more turnover, shorter than Senate because it’s closer to the people so they have to be more responsive to their constituents if they want to get reelected)

  • Sometimes called “the people’s house” because in original Constitution, it was the only one the people directly voted for (later changed by 17 amendment)

  • Closer to the issues the people in their district (constituents) care about

  • Less likely to form bipartisan coalitions to pursue goals

  • Strict debate rules: can only be 1 hour per person because there’s so many people

• Both houses have to agree (majority) on identical versions of the bill and then get signed by the president (or overturn the veto by 2/3 supermajority of both houses) before it’s a law

• Primary power: pass laws

• Enumerated powers: powers given to Congress by Article I section 8 of the Constitution

  • Power to pass federal budget (power of the purse)

  • Power to raise revenue (income taxes, tariffs, etc)

  • Power to coin money (same currency throughout country)

  • Power to declare war (branch that represents the people is the only one that can declare war and send those people to war)

  • Power to raise and maintain the armed forces

• Implied powers: powers that Congress has but that aren’t explicitly given by the Constitution

  • Come from necessary and proper clause

2.2 - structure, power, and functions of Congress

• House leadership: Speaker of the House, majority and minority leaders, majority and minority whips (in that order for power)

  • Speaker of the House: only specific role mentioned in Constitution

    • Constitution only says that the representatives vote to choose the Speaker but doesn’t say what powers the Speaker has

    • Always member of majority party (because voted by representatives)

    • Has power to determine who can speak (and who can’t)

    • Makes committee assignments

  • Majority and minority leaders

    • Guide their party in policy making issues

    • Help direct debate

    • Make sure their party members are working together to get policy passed that is favorable for their party

  • Majority and minority whips

    • Responsible for party discipline

    • Make sure party members are working for the party and makes sure they’re showing up for votes

• Senate leadership: president of the Senate, president pro tempore, majority and minority leaders

  • President of the Senate: VP of the US

    • Mentioned in Constitution

    • Tie breaking vote (only time they vote)

    • Rarely present at Senate meetings

  • President pro Tempore: power in Senate

    • Senate’s Speaker (that kind of power)

    • Senate members choose them

      • Always member of the majority party

    • Leads Senate when vice president is away

  • Majority and minority leaders

    • Majority leader has a lot of power because they set the legislative agenda (chooses which bills reach floor for debate and which ones don’t)

      • Does this by controlling calendar assignments of the bills

• Both the Senate and the House use committees to get stuff done because it’s more efficient

• Committee: smaller group of legislators that debate and draft legislation

  • Standing committee: remains from Congress to Congress, always there

    • Deals with issues that are always present

    • Ex: Senate appropriations committee: largest and most powerful, chooses where federal money will be spent

    • Ex: House ways and means committee: one of the most powerful, responsible for taxation bills

  • Joint committee: involve members of both Senate and House

    • Ex: library, printing

  • Select committee: opposite of standing committee, temporary committee that is formed for very specific purpose

    • Ex: committee that made Missouri compromise (where slavery could and couldn’t exist)

  • Conference committee: formed if both houses pass different versions of a bill

• How stuff gets done - House: more strict rules

  • Timed debate (1 hr per person)

  • House rules committee: gatekeeper for all legislation, chooses which bills get debated and when

    • If it doesn’t let a bill through for debate, that bill dies

    • Decides when votes take place

    • Assigns bills to committees for debate/revision

  • Committee of the whole: relaxes some debate rules so bill amendments can be debated faster, requires quorum of 100

  • Discharge petition: majority vote to bring a bill out of a committee it’s stuck in

• How stuff gets done - Senate: looser rules

  • Unlimited debate

    • Filibuster: when Senators try to stall vote or kill a bill by just talking for a long time, today people just threaten filibuster

      • Cloture rule: 3/5 (60) supermajority vote can end a filibuster

  • Unanimous consent: call to restrict certain privileges to get work done faster

• How a bill becomes a law

  • Sponsored by House representative or a Senator

  • Bill often changes as a result of debate

    • Non-germane riders: things added on that are irrelevant to the bill but are helpful for some representative’s district/state

    • Pork barrel spending: funds saved for some representative’s district

  • Bill gets assigned a committee where there’s more debate and more changes

  • Bill comes out of committee and goes to the floor for a vote

    • Logrolling: “I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine”

  • If it passes, the bill goes to the other chamber for vote, but it often changes in this process

  • Conference committee is formed to get both chambers to agree on same version of the bill and go through both chambers again

  • Previous 3 steps repeat as many times as needed until both chambers pass the exact same bill

  • Bill goes to the president for signing and if it’s signed, it becomes a law

    • If bill gets vetoed, it either dies (most often) or the veto gets overridden by 2/3 supermajority in both houses

• Federal budget: can only be started in the House (power of the purse, because it’s the people’s house they should make first vote of budget)

  • Mandatory spending: money that has to be spent on stuff by law

    • Ex: medicare, medicaid

  • Discretionary spending: money that can be spent however, what is left over after mandatory

    • What everyone fights over

  • Deficit spending: mandatory spending increases, and while discretionary spending should decrease to make up for that, it doesn’t

    • Extra money comes from borrowing or raising taxes

2.3 - congressional behavior/factors affecting how well Congress does its job

• Ideological divisions: liberal (democrat) vs conservative (republican)

  • The ideologies have been becoming more polarized and less from the middle, making it harder to get work done by negotiating and compromising

  • We get gridlock and fighting instead of laws getting passed

  • Best way to get work done is to have same majority party in both House and Senate

    • How FDR and Obama got things done

• Divided government: when one party controls the House and the other controls the Senate OR when president is from opposite party of Congress

  • When Obama was lame duck (end of 8 year term, can’t be reelected), he got to appoint a SCOTUS justice but since he was at the end of his term, Congress didn’t really try to work with him but Obama appointed a justice (liberal) but the Senate (confirms SCOTUS appointments) was majority Republican so McConnell (majority leader) said it wasn’t good to let a lame duck president choose a justice so the Senate refused to hold a conformation hearing

    • When Trump had chance to appoint a new justice, the majority Republican Senate went out of its way to hold the conformation hearing for a conservative justice even though Trump was at the end of his term (went against previously said belief with Obama)

• How representatives understand their role

  • Delegate model: vote based on the people they represent

    • Believes that they must vote with the will of their constituents (even if it’s against their own choice)

    • Believes they represent the people’s desires and not their own

    • Mostly in the House because the people can replace them in 2 years if they don’t like how they’re voting

  • Trustee model: vote based on own beliefs

    • Believes that they have been entrusted with the people’s faith when they got elected so they must vote according to their own conscience

    • Can vote against the will of the people if they believe it is the right thing to do

    • Ex: Mitt Romney (republican) voted for Trump’s impeachment even though his constituents were against it

  • Politico model: mix of delegate and trustee

    • Act like delegate when their constituents clearly have strong feelings about an issue

    • Act like trustee if constituents don’t have strong feelings/opinion

• Redistricting: reapportionment of House seats based on 10 year census

  • Baker v. Carr: rural voters had more power than urban ones, violated 14 amendment, 1 person 1 vote principle

  • Shaw v. Reno: weirdly drawn districts so the were majority black voters, drawing districts solely based on race is illegal

    • Gerrymandering: when districts are drawn to benefit one group over another

      • Partisan gerrymandering: districts are drawn based on political party

      • Racial gerrymandering: districts are drawn based on race, illegal by Shaw v. Reno

Executive branch

2.4 - roles and powers of the president

• Policy agenda: policies that the president campaigns on (promises they will pass)

  • Informal contract between president and the people

  • President says that they will work to put certain policies into place

• Formal powers: powers explicitly given to POTUS by article II of Constitution

  • Power of veto: forbid a bill from becoming law (unless overridden by 2/3 of each house)

    • President has 10 days to sign it into law

    • Usually veto laws that aren’t in line with the policy agenda

    • President knows what laws are going through Congress so they can just threaten to veto if they don’t like it so representatives revise the law before even giving it to the president so they’re more likely to sign it

    • Pocket veto: if Congress adjourns before 10 day signing period ends and president hasn’t signed it, then the bill is vetoed

  • Commander in chief of the US armed forces

    • Ex: Joe Biden campaigned that he would remove all American troops from Afghanistan because he does actually have the power to do that (part of his policy agenda)

• Informal powers: powers not mentioned in the Constitution but they exist because of the nature of executive power

  • Bargaining and persuasion: president represents the whole country so they can talk to the people

    • President can try to persuade the people that what they are doing in office is good and try to persuade them to pressure their representatives to pass laws in line with the president’s policy agenda

    • Can also bargain with Congress to get favorable legislation passed

      • Ability to bargain is directly correlated to presidential approval ratings (Johnson got work done with his 80% approval rating but Congress didn’t work with Clinton and his 40% approval rating)

  • Executive order: directive from president that has the force of federal law but is not actually a law

    • A way for president to direct the bureaucracy or move money around or do whatever else to accomplish their policy agenda

    • Can be easily reversed with another executive order by a later president if they are of an opposing party

    • Ex: Trump couldn’t get Congress to pass a law to build a wall on the Mexican border, so he rerouted money via executive order to get it done

    • Ex: Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was an executive order

  • Signing statement: special statement added onto laws that say how the president interprets it and/or how they plan on executing it

    • Presidential interpretation is different from congressional intent

    • Ex: Roosevelt issued signing statement on a law in WW2 saying that he disagreed with a section of it (he thought it was unconstitutional) but that he had to sign it because a veto would be a big delay for US efforts on the war front

  • Executive agreements: agreement between president and another country leader

    • Not a treaty because it doesn’t require Senate approval, made by president alone

    • Only exist while that president is in power

    • Ex: Obama entered Paris agreement with executive agreement (not a treaty), Trump got the US out of it, Biden put the US back in

    • More politically binding than legally binding

2.5 - checks on the president

• President has main conflict with Senate because of Senate power of advice and consent (presidential appointments have to be approved by Senate)

  • Power to appoint ambassadors (US diplomats sent to other countries to organize US efforts in that country and US relations with that country): Senate usually just says yes because it’s not that powerful of a position

  • White house staff: people that help that president, need no Senate approval

  • Cabinet appointments: heads of the main executive departments, have to be approved by Senate but are usually approved because if the president won then they should be able to choose who they want in the cabinet

    • Close call when Trump appointed Betsy Devos as education secretary (unpopular with Senate because of beliefs on private education), 50-50 vote in Senate so Pence (VP) broke the tie and confirmed her

  • Federal court appointments: most contentious (especially for SCOTUS)

    • Lots of fighting because there are high stakes (life tenure, presidential ideology is upheld even after they leave office)

    • Reagan nominated Robert Bork but Bork was going to rule against civil rights decisions and said monopolies were good so the Senate didn’t confirm him and made fun of him on TV

2.6 - expansion of presidential power

• President’s power has been growing since Roosevelt (New Deal program)

• Formal powers: explicitly mentioned in the Constitution (Ex: veto, appointments)

• Information powers: not in Constitution but still exercised (Ex: executive order)

• Over time, the president has been using more of both powers to create a more powerful executive (exactly what anti-federalists where afraid of, Hamilton explained that it was fine in Federalist 70)

• Federalist 70: arguments for a single executive

  • Anti-federalists thought that a single executive would have too much concentrated power and wanted to split the executive into multiple people

  • Arguments in Federalist 70: single person can act decisively when needed, single executive is protection against executive abuse of power because they have all the blame if they become tyrannical

• Different presidents view executive power differently

  • Roosevelt thought president should have lots of power, Taft thought they should have less

  • Washington gave most powers to Congress

  • Jackson expanded executive power (vetoed a lot) because he thought it was his job to represent the people

  • Lincoln expanded executive power to emancipate slaves and suspended habeas corpus (people could be arrested without a proper trial, habeas corpus guarantees trial before arrest)

  • Roosevelt expanded executive power even more with his New Deal (helped Americans during Great Depression), vetoed more than any other president up to his time (635), got elected 4 times (broke 2 term tradition set by Washington), tried to push SCOTUS judges out if they disagreed with his beliefs (didn’t work)

• President is not immune to the checks and balances even though the power has grown

  • Ex: Trump still got impeached

  • 22nd amendment: term limits for president (can only be elected twice)

2.7 - presidential communication

• President has the attention of the whole nation every time they speak (everyone knows who the president is) and they are the only politician with this power so they use it to persuade the people of things they believe in

• Bully pulpit: the nation listens whenever the president speaks, the president has a very large basis of listeners to which they can talk to

• State of the union address: only constitutionally required communication from president, delivered at the beginning of each year, make policy recommendations to Congress while the country listens too

• New technology has increased president’s bully pulpit

  • Radio

    • Roosevelt hosted fireside chats through radio where he would outline the major proposals and their impact on Americans, worked really well to get lots of legislation passed in his first 100 days

  • TV

    • President could speak both audibly and visually to the people

    • Made it necessary for president to look good (and sound good)

      • People listening to Nixon vs Kennedy debates on radio thought Nixon won but people watching it on TV thought Kennedy won

    • Kennedy got elected and hosted televised press conferences to talk to the people about his policy agenda

  • Social media

    • President can speak directly to the American people (through things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc) without third party mediators

    • President could respond to the public much faster

    • Used by Obama: used it to keep his constituents informed of policy ideas

    • Used even more by Trump: huge Twitter presence, praise people that were loyal and attack political enemies, up to 35 tweets per day

    • Still has limits because Twitter shut down Trump’s account after January 6 Capitol riots

2.12 - bureaucracy intro (structure and roles)

• Bureaucracy: people who carry out responsibilities of federal government, executive branch authority

• Cabinet departments: 15 departments, president’s cabinet is the head of the 15 departments

  • Ex: department of defense

• Agencies: work to accomplish goal of department

  • Ex: IRS in department of treasury collects taxes

  • Ex: US mint which coins and prints money

• Independent regulatory commissions: operate somewhat apart from president’s authority, created to regulate a specific aspect of society

  • Ex: FCC (federal communications commission) makes sure that there’s no explicit language on TV

• Government corporation: hybrid between agency and private business, created when free market is the best way to offer services to the public, when something needs to be done but it isn’t profitable enough that a private business would do it but isn’t enough involved with government either

  • Ex: USPS

• What they do

  • Write and enforce regulations

    • Ex: FCC made it a rule that closed captions need to be available

  • Issue fines for non-compliance (compliance monitoring)

    • Ex: if you don’t pay your taxes on time you get a fine

    • Ex: there’s a fine if businesses don’t follow clean air act’s regulations on pollution

  • Interact with Congress: go to committees to talk about department goals

    • Work with committees and interest groups (iron triangle)

    • Bureaucrats offer expertise to Congress who approves funding for their departments

    • Interest groups have experts that inform Congress about implications of policies and provide funding for Congressional races

    • If interest groups help a congressman get elected then they will provide funding for an agency that addresses interests of interest group

    • Iron triangles are less prevalent now because there’s so many more interest groups and issue networks

      • Issue network: work to weaken iron triangles, group of people that come together around one specific issue

• How bureaucracy efficiency has changed

  • Spoils system: Jackson times, give bureaucratic jobs to people who supported his presidency (not necessarily who was qualified)

  • Civil service reform: after a bureaucratic applicant was told no and assassinated Garfield (the president that told him no)

  • Pendleton civil service act (1883): created merit-based system for applicants for bureaucratic jobs, increased effectiveness of bureaucracy because competent people that knew what they were doing were in bureaucracy

  • Civil service reform act: under Carter, upheld merit based system, expanded opportunities for women to work in bureaucracy and increased efficiency of many departments

2.13 - discretionary and rule making authority of the bureaucracy

• Bureaucracies make finer rules and regulations to actually make sure the law gets executed because one president can’t do everything

• Ex: clean air act

  • Congress people aren’t biologists or climatologists and don’t know the details so they just said businesses need to emit less pollutants

  • EPA makes specific and concrete rules for what businesses can and can’t do because they are the environmental experts

• Delegated discretionary authority: power of agencies is delegated to them to enforce the laws, have expertise in the field so they have discretion as to when and how to enforce law

• Rule making authority: make specific rules for how law will be carried out

• Ex: 16th amendment

  • Amendment establishes income tax but is really vague and only says that income tax exists with no details about how it will work

  • IRS makes all the rules for how the taxes will be collected, when they’re due, how they’re paid, etc

• Department of homeland security: protects from terrorism and maintains/controls borders (which immigrants are legal, which can seek asylum)

• Department of transportation: manages all types of transportation (highway, air travel, how many hours flight attendants work and rest)

• Department of veteran affairs: manages welfare of veterans (creation and staffing of veterans hospitals)

• Department of education: manages states’ implementation of federal education standards (how schools receive grants and the qualifications needed to get them)

• Environmental protection agency (EPA): protects environment and human health through environmental regulations (nuclear waste rules)

• Federal elections commission (FEC): administers and enforces campaign finance laws (how to become official candidate, how much money can be raised and from whom and what candidates can do with that money)

• Securities and exchange commission (SEC): regulates stock market and prevents fraud

2.14/2.15 - holding the bureaucracy accountable/checking its power

• Most of the checking is from Congress and the president (SCOTUS sometimes though)

• Congress needs to make sure that agencies implement laws the way Congress intended for them to

  • Congressional oversight: committee hearings and power of the purse

    • Committee hearings: when committees call head of departments/agencies to testify and report progress

    • Power of the purse: Congress can just not authorize spending for a bureaucratic agency if they don’t like what it’s doing

• President has authority over bureaucracies so they can use formal and informal powers

  • President can appoint new heads of agencies (appoint people that will help the president’s policy agenda)

    • Ex: Trump fired James Comey (director of FBI) for not handling Russia’s interference with 2016 election properly

  • Executive order

    • Ex: Lyndon B. Johnson thought civil rights were important and he signed the civil rights act but agencies that enforced it would only know about the discrimination after it happened, Johnson signed an executive order saying that contractors had to take affirmative action (populate with minorities)

• Compliance monitoring: biggest slowdown for bureaucratic efficiency, agencies have to follow up with the industry they are regulating to make sure they are following the rules (takes a lot of time and work)

• People can appeal to courts if they think a regulation is unconstitutional (very rare)

Judicial branch

2.8 - judicial branch

• Structure of federal court: district courts —> appellate courts —> SCOTUS

  • There is more to the federal court than just the Supreme Court

  • Judges: appointed by president, confirmed by Senate, have life tenure - for all federal courts

  • Jurisdiction: power of the court, what kind of cases it can hear and decide on

    SCOTUS: highest federal court

    • Only court established by Constitution (Article III)

    • Have both appellate jurisdiction (hear appeals from a lower court) and original jurisdiction (hear a case for the first time)

    • Has a very narrow scope of original jurisdiction, only when: case between states or involving ambassadors/other public officials

    • Most cases it hears are appeals (appellate jurisdiction)

  • Lower courts are established by Congress (Article III)

    • Judiciary act of 1789: established structure and jurisdiction of lower federal courts

  • Courts of appeals: 12 regional circuit courts

    • Have appellate jurisdiction (from cases in lower courts)

    • Each state has a regional circuit that they can appeal to

    • Make sure that the law was applied correctly

    • 3 judges and no jury

  • District courts: lowest in federal court hierarchy

    • 94 courts throughout country with at least one in each state

    • Original jurisdiction only

    • Cases will be heard by judge and jury

• Power of the courts (specifically SCOTUS)

  • Judicial review: court has the power to rule on the constitutionality of laws, not granted in Constitution (came from Marbury v. Madison and Federalist 78), most potent checking power on other branches

    • Federalist 78: independence of judicial branch protects its power and protects it from public pressure, nature of its power is judicial review

    • Marbury v. Madison: established precedent of judicial review for Supreme Court

2.9 - legitimacy of the judicial branch

• Anti-federalists didn’t like life tenure of judges and the fact that they were appointed and thought the courts would be too powerful (even though they don’t make or execute laws)

• Court has power to rule on constitutionality of laws (judicial review), which can establish national policy

• Whenever the court rules on a case, that case becomes precedent (act like template for future decisions that may be similar)

  • Stare decisis: let the precedent stand (doesn’t mean precedents can’t be overturned)

• What determines if precedent stands or will be overturned?

  • Types of constitutionalism: loose and strict

    • Loose constitutionalism: consider Constitution to be living and evolving

    • Strict constitutionalism: interpret Constitution as the words that are literally written and that’s it

  • Ideology of court: mostly liberal or mostly conservative

    • Burger court was liberal: Roe v. Wade (allowed abortion in first trimester), US v. Nixon (limited executive privilege)

    • Rehnquist court was conservative: Planned Parenthood v. Casey (restricted abortion rights), District of Columbia v. Heller (expanded access to guns)

  • Future presidents may try to appoint justices that could overturn precedents favoring their opposing ideology

• The decisions made by SCOTUS have huge and long lasting effects

2.10/2.11 - SCOTUS in action and checking it

• Judicial activism: when a court deliberately works to act to establish policy and thus considers the broad effects on society that the decision may have

  • Usually a complaint: court is going beyond Constitution to establish majority’s ideological will

  • Warren court: accused after Brown v. Board ruling (overturned precedent of racial segregation)

  • Roberts court: accused after Citizens United v. FEC ruling (gave Republican candidates an edge)

• Judicial restraint: believe judges aren’t appointed to make policy (that’s legislature’s job), law should only be struck down if it goes against what’s written in the Constitution

  • Emphasize precedent and stare decisis

  • Created occasion for civil rights violation (Plessy v. Ferguson)

  • Can keep judges from overturning precedents that need to be overturned

• Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857): judicial activism

  • Taney court

  • Compromise of 1820: set places that slavery could be (below a certain line)

  • Dred Scott (slave) was taken to IL and WI (slavery not allowed) so he sued for his freedom saying that his enslavement was invalid after he lived in free territory

  • Court ruled that since slaves weren’t citizens, Scott had no right to even be suing the federal court

  • Struck down on compromise of 1820 saying that slaves were property and fifth amendment protects a person’s property so a law depriving someone of their property is unconstitutional so slavery became allowed all throughout nation

  • Judicial activism because it gave southern states more power so northerners were upset

• Korematsu v. US (1944): judicial restraint

  • Roosevelt issued an executive order saying that Americans with Japanese descent (most were American citizens) had to go to internment camps because they might be involved in espionage

  • Korematsu (one of the citizens that was forced into a camp) said that Americans have rights that protect them from being imprisoned without a trial (fifth amendment)

  • SCOTUS upheld internment

• How other branches can check SCOTUS decisions: laws, amendments, appointments, enforcement

  • Congress can pass laws modifying the impact of SCOTUS decisions

    • In US v. Lopez after GFSZA was shut down Congress amended it to show how it relates to commerce

  • Constitutional amendments

    • Thirteenth amendment reversed decision of Dred Scott

  • Congress can pass laws that impact court’s jurisdiction

    • Can alter appellate jurisdiction (not original) by restricting what cases the court can and can’t hear

  • Judicial appointments

    • President appoint justices who can reverse precedent decisions that they don’t like

  • President can just not enforce the SCOTUS decision

    • Court said forcing Cherokee to leave was unconstitutional so Jackson (president, wanted to remove Cherokee) said that the court has to enforce that decision