Constitution has had to be explained and interpreted so that it could meet the needs of the times. How has this been done? 1. THE CONSTITUTION HAS BEEN DEVELOPED THROUGH GENERAL LAWS PASSED BY THE CONGRESS The Congress has passed laws to establish rules for the Federal courts and new courts as they have been needed. The Congress has passed laws creating the Executive Departments of the Federal Government, and also many bureaus and commissions. In this way, the Congress has actually changed and added to the organization of the Government. It has also passed laws determining who should become President if the President and the Vice President should die while in office. Many other details of government organization have been built up on the foundation of the Constitution by laws passed by the Congress. 2. THE MAKING OF TREATIES HELPS TO DEVELOP THE CONSTITUTION Our relations with other nations are under the joint control of the President and the Senate. The Constitution provides that the President "shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.... When the President and Senate together agree with a foreign nation upon a treaty this often helps to develop the meaning of the Constitution. The Constitution does not say whether aliens living in this country can own land, so you might think that the States would decide this matter. But the President and the Senate have made treaties with foreign governments in which the right to own land in the United States was granted to the citizens of the foreign countries. Again, the Constitution gives Congress the power to "provide and maintain" Navy. The Congress has usually decided how large the a T Navy should be by controlling the amount of money spent for it. But we made treaties with foreign nations in which we agreed to limit the size of our Navy. Many more examples could be given to show how treaties help to develop the meaning of the Constitution. 3. THE FEDERAL COURTS HELP TO EXPLAIN THE MEANING OF THE CONSTITUTION One purpose of the Federal courts is to explain or interpret our Constitution, laws, and treaties. The courts are sometimes called on to decide the meaning of words of the Constitution. A few of the laws made by Congress T have been held to be unconstitutional (not in agreement with the Constitution). Many others have been held to be constitutional. The Supreme Court has approved as constitutional many acts of Congress that members of the Constitutional Convention could not possibly have had in mind at the time when the Constitution was written. What statesman of 1787 could have imagined the need for laws to regulate telegraph, telephone, radio, and television between the States? Yet the Supreme Court has decided that such laws, when they are drawn up in agreement with the basic principles of government given us in the Constitution, are constitutional. Such decisions, and the laws that they have approved, have enlarged and added to the Constitution without changing it. 4. CUSTOM AND THE PRACTICES OF OUR POLITICAL PARTIES HAVE ADDED MEANING TO THE CONSTITUTION The political parties in this country have adopted different ways of nominating candidates for national offices. Neither the Constitution nor the Federal laws give us any standards to regulate such nominations. Yet the way of choosing officers to whom the people may delegate authority is part of the plan of government built on the foundation of the Constitution. Sometimes custom is stronger than written law. It is a custom that the President shall in most cases appoint The twenty-four formal amendments to our Federal Constitution represent but one method by which our Constitution develops The Laws Treaties Court Decisions Customs and Development of Our Federal Constitution Figure 22 Development of Our Federal Constitution by Informal Methods members of his own political party to head the Executive departments of the Federal Government. This has proved a good way to reach the objective of the Second Article of the Constitution—the setting up of an effective executive branch to put the laws into effect. 5. RULES MADE BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES GIVE MEANING TO THE CONSTITUTION Many of the acts passed by the Congress are rather general. They do not take care of all the details that are necessary to put the laws into effect. This responsibility is delegated to some government agency, such as a department, bureau, or commission. Often the agencies that put the laws into effect have to make rules to fill in the details. These rules have the same general effect as acts of the Congress if they interpret the law and do not go beyond it. In this way the rules made by government agencies help to develop the plan of government outlined in the Constitution. We can readily see that the Constitution has grown both through regular amendments and through informal methods, as Figure 22 shows. A great Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, said over a hundred years ago: "We must never forget that it is a Constitution . . . intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." It should be remembered, however, that the Supreme Court of the United States may decide whether each part of the government plan built up by laws on the foundation of the Constitution is constitutional or unconstitutional. THE CONSTITUTION HAS GROWN BY THE ADDITION OF NEW STATES TO THE NATION One by one new States have been added to the Federal Union. Instead of the original 13 States there are to |