A bare sketch of the topics to be addressed as we progress with Government for Grownups. As posts come up and comments come in, I will try and fill in the outline and add new categories as needed. If no author is listed for the link, assume it's a post of mine. Please, if you post something relevant to the project, let me know via message or comment here.
The Questions are intended both as prompts for anyone and as a more specific list of what I'm trying to answer in each section, and plan to write about eventually.
I will try and have a new leading post up every Sunday evening. Sometimes, I will fail.
Thanks to ktm for kicking the outline off, and assisting in the brainstorming!
Foundation of the American government:
- What is it?
- What is it not?
- What are we trying to achieve?
Three branches of American federal government.
Legislative
Constitutional Duties: Write the bills/laws; responsible for appropriations and budgets.
Membership:
Questions:
Judicial
Constitutional Duties: Interpret laws and, when appropriate, write decisions on constitutionality of law.
Membership:
Executive
Constitutional Duties: Enforce the laws passed by Congress.
Membership:
Questions:
Legislative
Constitutional Duties: Write the bills/laws; responsible for appropriations and budgets.
Membership:
- Senate: ~100 senators; approx. 1/3 elected in each election cycle.
- House: ~435 representatives; all elected in each election cycle
Questions:
- What is the role of the congressional representative (House or Senate)?
- What is the difference between a Senator and a Representative? Why is there a difference?
- How should Congress make decisions? Is the committee system democratic?
- Is the filibuster necessary?
- What is the role of the congressional leadership?
Judicial
Constitutional Duties: Interpret laws and, when appropriate, write decisions on constitutionality of law.
Membership:
- District/Circuit/"Lower" Courts: Appointed by Executive Branch, subject to Senate approval.
- Supreme Court: Eight Associate Justices and one Chief Justice), appointed by the President and approved by the Senate for life-time terms (i.e., until retirement and/or death);
- What is the responsibility of the judiciary toward the people? Should decisions factor in current societal norms or rest only upon each individual jurist's interpretation of the law?
- Does judicial supremacy exist (i.e., is the Court the only branch granted the power of interpretation by the Constitution)?
- Is the Supreme Court undemocratic? Is it counter-majoritarian (does it protect minorities)?
- Should justices have life-long terms?
Executive
Constitutional Duties: Enforce the laws passed by Congress.
Membership:
- President: Elected every four years by the Electoral College after a nationwide vote.
- Vice President: Elected on a ticket with the president.
- Executive Agencies (including the President's Cabinet).
Questions:
- Why do we (still) have the Electoral College?
- How long should a president serve?
- What is the “unitary theory of the executive”? Is it correct?
- In what branch does the Vice President (also president of the Senate) belong?
- What is the role of the Department of Justice? Should it be independent of the Executive?
- What is the president's responsibility toward popular opinion?
- When should a president veto a bill?
Extra-Constitutional Government Organizations:
- The Federal Reserve
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Catherine Forsythe
Writer to the Stars
Emily Holleman
Iron Skillet
Leslie Harpole
old new lefty
Salon.com
Comments
Are we supposed to answer these questions? Is that your job? Is this a test? Are you grading us? Are we working together as teams?
I gotta start reading directions.
Sorry.
I can't wait to read your answers. And I am so serious. Cannot wait.
(How about that Jindal refusing the unemployment money? Unbelievable. In a believable kind of way.)
As far as wakingupslowly's aside, I hadn't read about Jindal. I am sure the unemployed people in Louisiana will be thrilled about that. Jindal is just laying his groundwork for his own Presidential run.
Beyond rated, bookmarked.
The answer is we are both.
A Republic is a government without a monarch, the executive power usually residing with a president. It is also a government with input from the governed through elected representatives.
Here's how Madison described it in The Federalist #10:
"A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.”
Madison uses representative democracy and republic as meaning the same.
Literally, though, a Republic doesn't assure democracy, but it implies it on some level. Democracy, pure or representative is explicit about the nature of that representation.
So, a Federal Republic and a Representative Constitutional Democracy.
That's my take on it...
I'll try to pitch in with more than an occasional comment - perhaps it might be fun to do a piece on Athenian democracy, so that the roots of American democracy might be a little better understood. I am no scholar on the matter, but its always held a fascination for me - how what was done in 450 BC and over in under 100 years might resurface 2100 years later.
I had to find video of Professor Turgeson, Zuma, but having watched some I'm now going to change my whole plan. OK, class, why did America withdraw from Vietnam in 1975...?