United States Government: Structure, Powers, and Process
Framework
The Constitution creates a federal republic with separated powers and overlapping checks. Article I (Congress), Article II (executive), Article III (judiciary); Article IV (federalism, full faith and credit); Article V (amendment); Article VI (supremacy); Article VII (ratification). The Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments, and most of those guarantees now apply to states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Details worth memorizing
- House: 435 members, two-year terms, revenue bills originate here, sole power to impeach (a simple majority vote to impeach).
- Senate: 100 members, staggered six-year terms; advice and consent - treaties need a two-thirds vote, Cabinet appointments a simple majority; tries impeachments, with two-thirds required to convict.
- President: four-year term; the Twenty-Second Amendment limits a person to two elected terms.
- Amendment: proposal by two-thirds of both chambers (or a convention called by two-thirds of states), ratification by three-fourths of states.
- Judicial review: established in Marbury v. Madison (1803); not textually explicit in the Constitution.
- Federalism: delegated powers (federal), reserved powers (states, Tenth Amendment), concurrent powers (shared, e.g., taxation).
Traps
Confusing the two-thirds treaty threshold with simple-majority confirmation; mixing the House impeachment vote with the Senate conviction vote; assuming the line-item veto is constitutional (it was struck down in 1998); treating necessary and proper as identical to the supremacy clause. Watch numbers: 270 electoral votes to win, 60 votes to end a Senate filibuster.
Worked example
A president signs an executive agreement with a foreign leader instead of a treaty. Is Senate consent required? No - executive agreements rest on presidential authority and are not submitted for ratification, which is precisely why presidents sometimes prefer them.
Rule of thumb
Ask: which branch, which chamber, and what threshold? Most government questions turn on one of those three.