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.