THE JUDICIARY

             The United States has more lawyers per capita than any other country: two and a half times as many as Great Britain, five times as many as Germany, and twenty-five times as many as Japan. There’s even an entire television network devoted to covering trials (Court TV) and three versions of NBC’s popular show Law and Order. Courts and lawyers have played crucial roles throughout American history. There are three bases of American law:

1. Case law: Court decisions that inform judicial rulings
2. Constitutions: Agreements, such the U.S. Constitution and the state constitutions, that outline the structure of government
3. Statutes: Laws made by governments

             In the twentieth century, for example, court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) have shaped the political landscape and caused tremendous controversies. In today’s political environment, we hear complaints from some who say that the courts are overstepping their bounds and undermining democracy, whereas others see the courts as the last protection against tyranny of the majority. The judicial branch of government is an integral, albeit complicated, part of American democracy.

             I can clearly point out that the American legal system has its roots in the British system, which is based on common law. In this system, judges shape the law through their decisions, interpretations, and rulings, which are then collected into a body of law known as case law that other judges can use as reference. When judges make decisions, they look to similar cases for precedent, a court ruling from the past similar to the current case. 

The Presidency

The framers of the Constitution were wary of executive power because they saw it as the most likely source of tyranny. King George III of Britain was, for many, the villain of the Revolutionary War; he was an example of executive power run amok. At the same time, the framers knew that the first president would almost certainly be George Washington, whom they all admired greatly.

As they wrote the Constitution, the framers decided not to provide great detail about the president. Instead, the framers gave the office only a few specific powers. They wanted a strong executive who could deal with emergencies, particularly those involving other nations, but who would not dominate the U.S. government. The framers expected that Congress would be the focal point of the national government, and they structured the Constitution accordingly. They made the president powerful enough to check and balance Congress but not so powerful as to overrun Congress.

“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass.

         In “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Douglass takes a bold step and pride to use this platform to condemn the profits made from the slave trade, and, once again, he compares the treatment of slaves to that of animals. He mentions that in Baltimore, slave traders transported slaves in chains to ships in the dead of night because anti-slavery activism had made the public aware of the cruelty of that trade. Douglass recalls that when he was a child, the cries of chained slaves passing his house on route to the docks in the middle of the night had a chilling, unsettling effect on him.

           Douglass continually condemns the American churches and ministers excluding the abolitionist religious movements such as Garrison's for not speaking out against slavery. The contemporary American churches by remaining silent and acquiescing to the existence of slavery, he argues, is more of an infidel than Paine, Voltaire, or Bolingbroke (three eighteenth-century philosophers who spoke out against the churches of their time). Douglass argues that the church is "superlatively guilty" superlative, meaning even more guilty because it is an institution which has the power to eradicate slavery by condemning it. The Fugitive Slave Law, Douglass reasons, is "tyrannical legislation" because it removes all due process and civil rights for the black person: "For black men, there is neither law nor justice, humanity nor religion." (Under this Act, even freed blacks could easily be accused of being fugitive slaves and taken to the South.The Christian church which allows this law to remain in effect, Douglass says, is not really a Christian church at all.

Civil Disobedience - Part 1 through to 3 by Thoreau Reader

           For me this article by  thoreau criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws.
           Thoreau began by arguing that governments rarely proves itself useful to the people and that it derives its power from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate viewpoints. He contended that people's first obligation as citizens is to do what they believe is right and not to follow the law dictated by the majority. When a particular government is unjust, people should refuse to heed to the laws and distance themselves from the government in general. A person is not obligated to devote his life to eliminating evils from the world, but he is obligated not to participate in such evils. This includes not being a member of an unjust institutions. Thoreau further argues that the United States fits his criteria for an unjust government, given its support of slavery and its practice of aggressive war.
           He doubt the effectiveness of reform within the government and argues that voting and petitioning for change achieves only a little. He presented his own experiences as a model for how to relate to an unjust government: In protest of slavery, Thoreau refused to pay taxes and spent a night in jail. But, more generally, he ideologically dissociated himself from the government, "washing his hands" of it and refusing to participate in his institutions. According to him this form of protest was preferable to advocating for reform from within government he asserted that one cannot see government for what it is when one is working within it.
 

THE DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS AMONG THE AMERICAN STATES* JACK L. WALKER

               "The object of this analysis is the process of diffusion of ideas for new services or programs. Sometimes new legislation is virtually copied from other states. The California fair trade law, adopted in 1931, "was followed either verbatim or with minor variations by twenty states; in fact, ten states copied two serious typographical errors in the original California law."8 No assumption is being made, however, that the programs enacted in each state are always exactly alike or that new legislation is written in exactly the same way by every legislature". 

               For me I think Walker. 1969.clarified diffusion of innovations among the American states.In the American Political Science Review most States vary in how rapidly they tend to adopt new programs, policies' local legislature and many more. This variation can be explained with the "tree" model. There are regional leaders of innovation who emulate and compete with one another (this is the center of the tree, the main few branches). The rest of the states are smaller branches, sorted out according to the regional pioneer from which they take their cues.

              I chose to elaborate more on this paragraph because when Walker speaks of innovation, he doesn't refer to anything more than adopting a new program. Even if a state adopts a new program begrudgingly and appropriates only $1000 to it, the state has adopted the new program. Furthermore, Walker refers only to programs adopted by state legislatures and not by bureaucrats

             As to treating most states as identical and interchangeable and assumes that her interactive variable's significance implies actual influence of one state on another. However, it's possible to observe interaction without influence and noninteraction with influence

               Moreover, many may contend or try to rule out Walker's notion of regional emulation, assuming that any one state might emulate any other. Perhaps if we had considered these competing factors, then we would have noticed that rapidly diffusing policies are generally non-interactive but slowly diffusing policies are generally interactive

Revisiting the Constitution: Allow Naturalized Citizens to Be President

           "  But those American citizens who happen to have been born abroad to non-American parents — and who later choose to become “naturalized” American citizens — are not the full legal equals of those of us born in the U.S. True, naturalized Americans have always been allowed to serve as cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, senators and governors. And at the founding, anyone already a citizen could be president, regardless of birthplace. (Alexander Hamilton, for example, though born in the West Indies, was fully eligible to serve as president under the Constitution he himself helped draft.) But modern-day naturalized citizens are barred from the presidency simply because they were born in the wrong place to the wrong parents".

             This particular paragraph taken from Akhil Reed Amar's article "Allow Naturalized Citizens to Be President" law and political science professor  at Yale University contended that “All men are created equal.” Today, this glittering promise means far more than it meant in 1776. “Men” now includes “women,” and a black baby born today is the legal equal of a white baby. First-born children get no larger automatic inheritances than second-born kids, and America is fast approaching a time when those born gay have all the rights of those born straight. He simply argued about why naturalized citizens like myself are not allowed to run for the seat of the presidency because most federal Constitution builds on state constitutional ideas and practices. Naturalized citizens are allowed to lead every state; the rules for the presidency should follow suit. Ultimately, America should be more than a land where every child can one day grow up to become a governor or president and not just lower political offices.

            Base on this political standpoint Republican presidential candidate Mr. Donald J. Trump has increasingly taking jabs at Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is riding momentum as his closers rivalry from the beginning of their presidential race on the republican side. But so far, Mr. Cruz is resisting the bait.

           In the latest in a series of barbs against Mr. Cruz, Mr. Trump said there were questions about whether Mr. Cruz, who was born in Canada but whose mother was a United States citizen, was eligible to seek the presidency, making the comments in interviews with a New Hampshire television station and separately with The Washington Post.The issue could end up tying Mr. Cruz up in court, Mr. Trump has told numerous media around the country.The Constitution restricts the presidency to a “natural born citizen,” but many legal scholars have said that this would apply to Mr. Cruz, although a similar issue has never been tested in the courts. Mr. Cruz, who was born in Calgary, renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014.Mr. Cruz sought to brush off Mr. Trump’s questions about his eligibility, posting on Twitter a clip from the “jump the shark” episode of “Happy Days,” which has become a cultural reference for when something once popular has become overdone and gimmicky.

The Constitution and the Federalist

          In Federalist 23, Hamilton says this about the Union, the term used to describe the national government as representing all the states together: “The principal purposes to be answered by union are these--the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace, as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.” 

          For me the meaning of this passage is that the power to regulate interstate commerce is a critical one. Without commerce power , Congress could not pass policies ranging from protecting the environment and civil rights to providing health care for the elderly and the less fortune.

           I chose this paragraph simply because the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate and international commerce. American courts have spent many years trying to define "commerce" In 1824, the supreme court in deciding the case of GIBBONS v. OGDEN, defined commerce very broadly to encompass virtually every form of commercial activity. Today, commerce covers not only the movement of goods, but also the radio signals, electricity, telephone messages,  the internet, insurance transactions, and much more. 

Trans-national America by Randolph S. Bourne

          We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born and if distinctions are to be made between us, they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness. The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of 'giving themselves without reservation' to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted to. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land. They invented no new social framework. Rather they brought over bodily the old ways to which they had been accustomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile frontier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their pioneer daring was reserved for the objective conquest of material resources. In their folkways, in their social and political institutions, they were, like every colonial people, slavishly imitative of the mother country. So that, in spite of the 'Revolution,' our whole legal and political system remained more English than the English, petrified and unchanging, while in England law developed to meet the needs of the changing times.

          For me the meaning of this passage is that when all sorts people come together in unity like the United States has been in several centuries great things happen. The early colonist came to North American not to be colonized once again nor to be emulating the American Indian culture after emancipating themselves from the Great Britain colony; but to create one great nation founded with the whole legal and political system remained more English. This country was formed on the basis of pooling people and resources from all over the world. This is because when there's brain drain other nations lost their professionally trained personnel to the United States who in turn offered tremendous greater opportunities.

          I chose this paragraph simply because it is obvious that millions of diverse people are migrating to the United States legally and illegally year after year bringing together with them all different kinds of professions and talents taken upon themselves low class jobs the native Americans aren’t willing to do.

Americans Name Government as No. 1 U.S. Problem

                  " Although issues such as terrorism, healthcare, race relations and immigration have emerged among the top problems in recent polls, government, the economy and unemployment have been the dominant problems listed by Americans for more than a year".   

                     I chose to talk about these national issues listed above from Gallup as to why most Americans named the government the number one problem because the U.S. political science studies has numerous methods of interpreting and measuring political values by conducting public opinion polls. A small sampling of a few thousand people were given a questionnaire to fill out, the results of which are combined and calculated in a way that is believed to reflect the general attitude of the entire population.
                    Considering Five years into medicare spending cuts that were supposed to devastate private medicare options for older Americans, enrollment in private insurance plans through Medicare has shot up by more than 50 percent, confounding experts and partisans alike and providing possible lessons for the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. When Congress passed President Obama’s signature health law nearly six years ago, it helped offset the cost by cutting payments to Medicare Advantage plans, offered by private insurers operating under contract with the government. insurers and Republican said the cuts will drop about $150 billion over the period of 10 years would “gut” the program, a major theme in the 2010 and 2012 elections. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that enrollment would fall about 30 percent. In fact, more than 17 million people are now enrolled in such plans, up from under 11 million in 2010. Nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries have chosen private plans, offered by insurers like Humana and UnitedHealth Group, over the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program.
                      Global war on terrorism has been the talking point for most Presidential candidates because it has to do with our national security. For every government in power be recognized as one of the most successful in office depends on how well it protects its citizens and properties locally and abroad. ISIS IN AMERICA. 82 people have been accused
                     Race relations and immigration. The Republican presidential race has erupted in an incendiary new round of attacks over immigration, laying the groundwork in South Carolina for a months long fight that is likely to amplify hardline talk about border security and migrants before a national audience.
                    With Donald J Trump leading the way, the candidates have offered contentious proposals to build a wall on the Mexican border, block Muslims from entering the United States and turn away even 5-year-old refugees from Syria Party leaders had hoped some of the most provocative speech would have subsided by now as the race moved past Iowa, a state known for its fiercely hawkish immigration politics, and as more conventional candidates, like former Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, turned their attention toward the general election. Instead, the battle lines over immigration have only deepened, as Mr. Trump has maintained his upper hand in the race and the primary campaign has moved into South Carolina and a series of Southern states that vote over the next month.
by American officials of trying to help the Islamic State. How serious is this threat in regards to National Security? By KAREN YOURISH and JOSH WILLIAMS FEB. 4th 2016. New York Times