Article VI of the Constitution has several parts. The first part states that the debts the U.S. government incurred while the country was ruled by the Articles of Confederation are still valid and that the government will pay them now that it is ruled by the Constitution. Part of the background behind this part of the article is that Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, wanted the United States government to have a...
Article VI of the Constitution has several parts. The first part states that the debts the U.S. government incurred while the country was ruled by the Articles of Confederation are still valid and that the government will pay them now that it is ruled by the Constitution. Part of the background behind this part of the article is that Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, wanted the United States government to have a debt. Once the government had assumed and began to pay off the debt, people would come to trust the government to a greater extent.
The second part of Article establishes the Supremacy Clause--that is, the idea that the Constitution, as well as federal laws and treaties made pursuant to the Constitution, are the supreme law of the land and take precedence over state level laws. John Marshall, later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, helped establish the Supremacy Clause in practice through cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), a case in which the Supreme Court decided that states could not levy taxes on the federal bank because states cannot impede laws carried out as part of the powers given to the federal government in the Constitition.
Finally, the third part of the article requires government officials to take an oath but states that the oath must not be religious in nature and that the government cannot require religious tests of its employees. This article is an expression of the separation of church and state in the government.
No comments:
Post a Comment