compromise made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787,

where delegates who were trying to craft a new

governmental system for the United States agreed on how

the legislative branch of the government would be set up,

and the agreement they made was that it would be a two house

or bicameral legislature with a House of Representatives,

where the representatives would be apportioned

based on state population, and then a Senate where

every state would get two senators regardless of its size.

This is just one example of how the framers

of the constitution tried to introduce a notion of balance.

In this video, I wanna zoom out a little bit and look at

the broader constitution, because the legislative branch

was really only one part of it.

In fact, there are seven more articles of the constitution.

So here, I'd like to spend some time taking a closer look

at some of the other articles, paying special attention

to the executive branch and the judicial branch,

but before we do that, I just want to take a moment

to marvel at the size of the constitution.

Not because it's so big, but because it's so small.

This is the first page of the constitution,

famously starting with, "We the people," but the entire

original constitution could fit on four pages.

Compare that to the constitutions of many other nations

which are hundreds of pages long,

and I think the idea here in having a constitution

that's really only seven articles long

was that it was gonna set down principles.

This wasn't going to be a whole set of laws that outlined

everything that a state should do in any situation

but rather a set of broad ideas around which

lawmaking decisions could happen.

In a way, you could think of the constitution

as being kind of broad enough to be flexible.

They spoke in larger generalities that could be

applied to many different situations,

and I think the proof that this was a good way to think

about putting together a constitution is just in the fact

that we'd still have this constitution today,

more than 200 years after it was written in 1787.

The US Constitution is the oldest constitution in the world

that is still in effect at the national level.

I think that's a pretty big deal.

How did this constitution work?

Well, let's look a little bit more closely at these first

three articles and the branches of government they created.

One of the ways that the framers of the constitution

attempted to remedy the problems caused by the single branch

government under the Articles of Confederation

was creating a three branch government.

One branch, established in Article 1,

would be the Congress and within this building

is the House of Representatives and the Senate.

And this would be in the eyes of the framers,

really the most powerful of the branches.

They gave Congress the power to make law,

to tax, to raise an army, to coin money.

They really envisioned that most of the day to day

operations and most of the power of government

would fall under the duties of Congress,

but one thing that the Articles of Confederation

had lacked was a powerful executive,

so the second branch of government,

established in Article 2 is the executive branch,

the head of which is the president.

The job of the executive would be to enforce

or carry out the laws made by Congress,

and that would include doing things like waging war.

Remember that the first president was George Washington,

who had been the General of the Revolutionary Armies,

but the president could also kind of have the front lines

on dealing with foreign nations, so negotiating treaties,

and would also have the power

of appointing many government officials.

And lastly, the third branch would be the judicial branch

of government, established in Article 3.

The head of the judicial branch would be the Supreme Court,

the highest court in the land.

Of course, there are many other smaller courts

below it at the state and district level.

The Supreme Court's job, along with other courts,

would be to interpret the law, to see whether or not

things done by Congress and the president

fell within the bounds of the constitution.

And the framers really thought that the judicial branch

would end up being the weakest branch of government,

although both the presidency and the Supreme Court

have grown in power over the years.

Now, this is an incredibly brief overview

of these three branches.

These articles include lots more in them

about the specific powers of each of these branches

and the kinds of requirements one would need

to become a representative or president,

so I highly recommend that you read more about

the Constitution and check out these articles.

But what I want you to get out of this is that the framers

here were trying to separate the powers of government,

so they wanted to make sure that to avoid

having too much power in government.

Remember that they are trying to escape from the monarchy.

They want to make sure that government power

is kind of diffused among these three branches

with the idea that they're going to have to argue

with each other to get things done, they're going to have to

cooperate with each other to get things done,

so the separation of powers is one of the key

principles of the Constitution.

Another key principle is checks and balances.

What do I mean by checks and balances?

Well, this is the idea that each of the branches

of government has the power to check in the sense of stop,

like checkmate in chess, the other branches of government.

I think of this as kind of like a giant

governmental game of rock, paper, scissors.

Now, there are many ways that these branches can

check each other, but I just wanna give a couple of quick

examples to help you understand what that might be like.

Alright, say that Congress makes a law,

and the president doesn't like that law.

The president can use the power

of the veto to kill that law,

and if Congress gets annoyed enough with the president,

they might use their power to impeach the president.

What about the judicial branch?

The judicial branch's main checking function

is declaring laws unconstitutional.

The president or Congress may put through

a law that the Supreme Court says

is not consistent with the Constitution.

The judicial branch can then kill that law

by declaring it unconstitutional.

What happens if the other branches are unhappy

with the judicial branch?

One way that the president can check the judicial branch

is through appointing judges.

This would kind of change the composition of the court,

the people on the court, and so over time,

the presidency can influence who is on the Supreme Court

and how they rule on laws.

And lastly, if Congress isn't happy with the Supreme Court,

they might be able to impeach justices,

or change jurisdiction of the lower courts.

In this way, like the separation of powers,

the framers intended to make sure that

one branch couldn't get too powerful,

because it would be able to check the other branches.

You could really think of this as being a brilliant way

of harnessing peoples' natural inclination

to look out for themselves.

As rivalries developed, as people tried to do

what they thought was best, they could help keep

government honest by fighting among themselves,

and as they all strove and checked each other,

it would keep all of government from becoming too powerful.