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It is a short document, and some of it is vague in meaning. Also, it was written 200 years ago, and the actual conditions and problems of an industrial nation are very different from those of the small pre-industrial society of the eighteenth century.
The First Article provides for the establishment of the legislative body, Congress, consisting of two Houses, and defines its powers. The second does the same for the executive, the President, and there is also provision in very general terms for a system of federal courts. The men of 1787 assumed that they were devising a constitution which would endure, but they also recognised that there might be a need for altering it, and they included provisions for amendment. The Fifth Article lays down the procedure for amendment, allowing either the states or Congress to take the initiative. A proposal to make a change must first be approved by two-thirds majorities in both Houses of Congress and then ratified by three quarters of the states.
The first ten amendments were made almost at once (1791); they form the \"Bill of Rights\", and are really an extension of the original Constitution. Two more amendments were adopted in the next seventy years, and the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth were passed after the Civil War.
The Constitution of the United States takes precedence over all state constitutions and laws, and over laws made by the United States Congress. But the Constitution also includes a list of the subjects concerning which Congress may make laws, and says that Congress has no other powers beyond those explicitly defined. The United States Congress does not have a general legislative power, but only power to make laws on these particular. subjects.
Article One (Section Eight) of the Constitution gives the list of the topics about which the Congress has authority to make laws. They include defence and foreign affairs, citizenship and naturalisation, the regulation of commerce with foreign countries and among the states, and power to collect taxes to pay the debts and to provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.
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