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No Religious Test Clause
The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is a clause within Article VI, Clause 3: It immediately follows a clause requiring all federal and state office holders to take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. This clause contains the only explicit reference to religion in the original seven articles of the U.S. Constitution. The ban on religious tests contained in this clause protects federal officeholders and employees as well as the officeholders of "State Legislatures, and ..the several states". This clause is cited by advocates of separation of church and state as an example of the " original intent" of the Framers of the Constitution to avoid any entanglement between church and state, or involving the government in any way as a determiner of religious beliefs or practices. This is significant because this clause represents the words of the original Framers, even prior to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Text Backgrou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religious Qualifications For Public Office In The United States
Religious qualifications for public office in the United States have always been prohibited at the national level of the federal system of government under the Constitution. Article VI of the Constitution of the United States declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States". The First Amendment of the Constitution also prevents the Congress of the United States from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion" (the Establishment Clause). Neither the First Amendment nor Article VI, however, were originally applied to the individual states, and individual restrictions were utilized by individual states to prevent Jews, Catholics, and atheists from occupying public offices. State-level requirements for public office were not entirely abolished until 1961, when the Supreme Court of the United States struck down religious qualifications for all public officeholders in its decision in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitution Of The United States
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the Federal government of the United States, federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the United States Congress, legislative, consisting of the bicameralism, bicameral Congress (Article One of the United States Constitution, Article I); the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive, consisting of the President of the United States, president and subordinate officers (Article Two of the United States Constitution, Article II); and the Federal judiciary of the United States, judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court of the Unit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pope
The pope is the bishop of Rome and the Head of the Church#Catholic Church, visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the pope was the sovereign or head of state of the Papal States, and since 1929 of the much smaller Vatican City state. From a Catholic viewpoint, the primacy of the bishop of Rome is largely derived from his role as the apostolic successor to Saint Peter, to whom Petrine primacy, primacy was conferred by Jesus, who gave Peter the Keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the Church would be built. The current pope is Leo XIV, who was elected on 8 May 2025 on the second day of the 2025 papal conclave. Although his office is called the papacy, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, jurisdiction of the episcopal see is called the Holy See. The word "see" comes from the Latin for 'seat' or 'chair' (, refe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitutionality
In constitutional law, constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When laws, procedures, or acts directly violate the constitution, they are unconstitutional. All others are considered constitutional unless the country in question has a mechanism for challenging laws as unconstitutional. Applicability An act or statute enacted as law either by a national legislature or by a subordinate-level legislature such as that of a state or province may be declared unconstitutional. However, governments do not only create laws but also enforce the laws set forth in the document defining the government, which is the constitution. When the proper court determines that a legislative act or law conflicts with the constitution, it finds that law unconstitutional and declares it void in whole ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Constitution (United States)
In the United States, each state has its own written constitution. They are much longer than the United States Constitution, which only contains 4,543 words. State constitutions are all longer than 8,000 words because they are more detailed regarding the day-to-day relationships between government and the people. The shortest is the Constitution of Vermont, adopted in 1793 and currently 8,295 words long. The longest was Alabama's sixth constitution, ratified in 1901, about 345,000 words long, but rewritten in 2022. Both the federal and state constitutions are organic texts: they are the fundamental blueprints for the legal and political organizations of the United States and the states, respectively. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (part of the Bill of Rights) provides that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Guarantee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
States' Rights
In United States, American politics of the United States, political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments of the United States, state governments rather than the federal government of the United States, federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess. Since the 1940s, the term "states' rights" has often been considered a loaded language, loaded term or Dog whistle (politics), dog whistle because of its use in opposition to federally-mandated racial Desegregation in the United States, desegregation and, more recently, Same ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of The United States
The history of the present-day United States began in roughly 15,000 BC with the arrival of Peopling of the Americas, the first people in the Americas. In the late 15th century, European colonization of the Americas, European colonization began and wars and epidemics largely decimated Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous societies. By the 1760s, the Thirteen Colonies, then part of British America and the Kingdom of Great Britain, were established. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on Slavery in the United States, slave labor and Atlantic slave trade, enslaving millions from Africa. After the British victory over the Kingdom of France in the French and Indian Wars, Parliament of Great Britain, Parliament imposed a series of taxes and issued the Intolerable Acts on the colonies in 1773, which were designed to end self-governance. Tensions between the colonies and British authorities subsequently intensified, leading to the American Revolutionary War, Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pardon
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction. Pardons can be viewed as a tool to overcome miscarriage of justice, allowing a grant of freedom to someone who is believed to be wrongly convicted or subjected to an excessive penalty. The second-best theory of pardons views pardons as second-best to Right to a fair trial, fair justice. Pardons can be granted in many countries when individuals are deemed to have demonstrated that they have "paid their debt to society", or are otherwise considered to be deserving of them. In some jurisdictions of some nations, accepting a pardon may ''implicitly'' constitute an admission of guilt; the offer is refused in some cases. Cases of wrongful conviction are in recent times more often dealt with by appeal rather than by pardon; however, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confederate States Of America
The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or Dixieland, was an List of historical unrecognized states and dependencies, unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States from 1861 to 1865. It comprised eleven U.S. states that declared Secession in the United States, secession: South Carolina in the American Civil War, South Carolina, Mississippi in the American Civil War, Mississippi, Florida in the American Civil War, Florida, Alabama in the American Civil War, Alabama, Georgia in the American Civil War, Georgia, Louisiana in the American Civil War, Louisiana, Texas in the American Civil War, Texas, Virginia in the American Civil War, Virginia, Arkansas in the American Civil War, Arkansas, Tennessee in the American Civil War, Tennessee, and North Carolina in the American Civil War, North Carolina. These states fought against the United States during the American Civil War. With Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ex Parte Garland
''Ex parte Garland'', 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333 (1867), was an important United States Supreme Court case involving the disbarment of former Confederate officials. Background In January 1865, the US Congress passed a law that effectively disbarred former members of the Confederate government by requiring a loyalty oath to be recited by any federal court officer that affirmed that the officer had never served in the Confederate government. Augustus Hill Garland, an attorney and a former Confederate Senator from Arkansas, subsequently received a pardon from US President Andrew Johnson. Garland then came before the court and pleaded that the act of Congress was a bill of attainder and an ''ex post facto'' law, which unfairly punished him for the crime for which he had been pardoned, and so was unconstitutional. Decision In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the law was both a bill of attainder A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder, writ of attainder, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supreme Court Of The United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over State court (United States), state court cases that turn on questions of Constitution of the United States, U.S. constitutional or Law of the United States, federal law. It also has Original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States, original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." In 1803, the Court asserted itself the power of Judicial review in the United States, judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution via the landmark case ''Marbury v. Madison''. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Pinckney (governor)
Charles Pinckney Jr. (October 26, 1757October 29, 1824) was an American Founding Father, planter, and politician who was a signer of the United States Constitution. He was elected and served as the 37th governor of South Carolina, later serving two more non-consecutive terms. He also served as a U.S. Senator and a member of the House of Representatives. He was a first cousin once removed of fellow signer Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Pinckney's descendants included seven future South Carolina governors, including men related to the Maybank and Rhett families. Early life and education Pinckney was born and educated in Charles Town in the Province of South Carolina. His father, Colonel Charles Pinckney, was a wealthy lawyer and planter. His mother was Frances Brewton (b. 1733), daughter of a goldsmith and sister of Miles Brewton and Rebecca Brewton Motte, who were both also prominent in Charleston history. His father had signed a loyalty oath to the British after they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
