- [Kim] Hi, this is Kim from Khan Academy.
And today I'm learning more about Article VI
of the US Constitution.
Article VI is, as we'll soon see, kind of
a constitutional grab bag.
It covers debts, religious tests for office,
and it establishes the constitution as the supreme
law of the land.
To learn more about what binds these diverse ideas together
I sought out the help of two experts.
Kermit Roosevelt is a professor of law specializing
in Constitutional Law and conflict of laws
at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
And, Michael Ramsey is professor of law and director
of International and Comparative Law programs
at the University of San Diego School of Law.
So, let's start out talking about the debts
portion of Article VI.
Professor Roosevelt, why were the framers
so interested in debt?
What was the historical context that led them
to explicitly address debt in Article VI?
- [Kermit] Debt is important generally because nations
often need to borrow money.
And specifically, with the constitution and
the Articles of Confederation the US Government
had been borrowing money to pay for the Revolutionary War.
So, there was a question, we're moving from a sort of
loose confederation almost like a treaty between nations
under the Articles of Confederation to a single
unitary country with a stronger national government
under the constitution.
And, there's a question, is it still the same country?
Will the new United States pay the debts
of the old United States?
- [Michael] Now, there's a general principal
of international law that a successor government
undertakes the obligations of the predecessor.
So, you wouldn't necessarily think this would be a problem,
but I think they were particularly concerned because
the idea of a republic was a somewhat new one,
at least in the 18th century, a somewhat unusual one.
And, the change of a republican government might
cause some worries in Europe where this money was owed.
So, I think they just wanted to reassure all
of the creditors that even if they were changing
their method of government that that wasn't going to
effect any of the debts.
- [Kim] What might have happened if they decided not
to pay those debts?
- [Kermit] If they decided not to pay the debts than
other countries would probably have been much less willing
to lend money to the new United States because they might
have thought, "Well, you know, another change
"in government could occur."
- [Michael] There was substantial question throughout
the world whether the United States would be able to survive
in the face of all the challenges that they had
after gaining their independence.
So, in order to make it seem that the United States
was a country that could be trust, a country that could
be expected to stick around and not collapse into chaos
or revert to colonial status one of the most important
things for them was to show that the debts would be honored
because a failure to honor debts would suggest
that the country did not, in fact, have a true sovereignty
and it was not prepared to be an actor on
the international stage that could be trusted.
- [Kermit] Another interesting thing to contrast this to
is the treatment of debts after the Civil War where,
of course, the United States, the federal government
paid its own debts but there's a provision in
the 14th Amendment explicitly repudiating
the Confederate debt.
So, if you loaned money to the Confederate States of America
you're never getting that back because we didn't treat that
as a valid government that would be continued going forward.
- [Michael] Another thing that it illustrates is that
the constitution, in some respects, was a visionary
document that was concerned with a long term future
of the United States.
But, in other respects it responded to very immediate
practical problems that the framers faced in their day.
They were thinking about not just the future of the country
for the ages, they were thinking about that,
but they weren't thinking just about that.
They were also thinking about reassuring France with respect
to the debts that existed right at that moment.
- [Kim] So, there's a lot going on in Article VI.
And specifically, it talks about the constitution
as the supreme law of the land.
So, what's important about that statement?
- [Kermit] What's important about that is that means
the Constitution is our highest law.
It prevails over any other kind of law in a conflict.
So, one thing that that means is the constitution
is supreme over state law.
And then, the constitution actually goes on to
talk about that a little bit more.
But, it also means the constitution is supreme
over federal law.
So, everyone is bound by the constitution.
The states can't go against it.
Congress can't go past it.
The president can't violate constitutional restrictions.
The constitution is really the last word.
It's the pinnacle or the keystone of the arch
of American democracy.
- [Michael] And, that's why we can say that things
are unconstitutional, that laws are unconstitutional
and therefore invalid.
And, most importantly, it's why the Supreme Court
can say that laws are unconstitutional and invalid.
It creates a superior law that limits the laws
that can be passed by the other parts of the government.
It creates a hierarchy of laws.
And, in doing so, it assures that we have a single set
of rules that applies to all the states
and to the federal government.
And, it can't be changed except by an amendment,
which is relatively difficult to do.
There's a procedure in the constitution for how
you can amend the constitution, but until amended
the constitution, as written, is our superior law.
And, that was different from the way that
the rules that the framers were used to
under the English system where they didn't have
a written constitution.
They had an unwritten constitution, but that constitution
was subject to change by parliament.
- [Kim] So, has the supremacy of the constitution
been tested over time?
- [Kermit] There haven't been a lot of claims
that the constitution is not supreme.
So, generally speaking everyone gives, at least,
lip service to this idea.
What's been tested is more the question of
who gets to decide what the constitution means
and when something conflicts with it.
So, if you want the constitution and federal law
to be supreme, probably you would want to have
someone in the federal government deciding when
there's a conflict, say with state law.
And, the forms that resistance that has taken
over the years are more states saying not,
"We can go against the constitution, we're above
"the constitution," but states saying, "We don't think
"what we're doing violates the constitution," right,
"And you at the Supreme Court, you think it does
"but you're wrong."
- [Michael] In the 19th century just before the Civil War
the Supreme Court decided in the Dred Scott case
that African Americans could not be citizens to
the United States, even if they were freed slaves.
And, President Lincoln believed that that was wrong.
He said that there was nothing in the constitution
that denied that, the ability of them to be citizens.
And, he said that the Supreme Court had
misinterpreted the constitution.
And, he would accept the Supreme Court's ruling
in that regard.
Later, in the 20th century, the Supreme Court
held that the constitution barred segregation,
particularly in schools in the Brown versus Board
of Education case.
But, many southern governors and other institutions
throughout the south thought that the Supreme Court
had gotten that one wrong.
And, they refused to abide by what the Supreme Court
had said the constitution means.
- [Kermit] What they said was not the constitution
doesn't bind us, but we know what the constitution means
better than you, Supreme Court, you're wrong.
You're making this up, it's political, it's not judging.
- [Kim] Another thing that Article VI talks about
is religious tests.
Why were the framers so interested in preventing
religious tests in government?
What sort of historical evils were they trying to prevent?
- [Kermit] So, this is connected to the basic idea
of the separation of church and state.
And, you separate church and state really to
protect both of those things.
So, you wanna protect religion from being corrupted
by political considerations, but you also want to
protect your political system from being a battleground
between rival religions.
- [Michael] So, where this comes from is that
in England they had had a series of what
they called Test acts.
And, what the Test Acts did was it required
that for people to be eligible for government offices
that the people had to be members of the Church of England.
And, that other religious groups they were barred
by the Test Act from holding government office.
So, actually many of those minority religions,
many adherents of those ended up coming to
the American colonies to gain some measure
of religious freedom.
The pilgrims were an example of that.
There was a Catholic colony in Maryland.
And, just generally speaking many of the people,
many of the colonists who came over were people
who were not part of the main established church in England.
And so, you can see why they would not wanna have something
like the Test Acts.
And, they wanted to make clear that in the new
national government that any religion or no religion
would be allowed for government office holders.
- [Kim] Do you think it's true that we don't have
religious tests or oaths in the United States?
How about the practice of swearing on a Bible
during the presidential inauguration?
- [Kermit] Well, the practice of swearing on a Bible
is very interesting, as is the fact that when the
president recites the oath of office every president,
going back to George Washington, has added on to
the end of it, "So help me God."
There's actually an oath in the constitution
the president has to swear to preserve, protect,
and defend the constitution.
But, the constitution doesn't say, "So help me God."
The presidents just add that on on their own.
And actually, that sort of illustrates the way
in which the constitution treats religion, which is
it can't be part of government in an official sense,
but we know that members of government are also people.
And, they have religious beliefs that are important to them.
And, we don't demand that they exclude religion
from their lives, we just demand that it be separated
from government authority.
So, you can swear on a Bible if you want to.
You don't have to.
You can swear on some other religious book.
We had a member of congress take an oath of office
on a Quran.
So, individual government officials are allowed to
include religion in so far as it's about them personally.
What you think is appropriate to mark this occasion,
what solemnifies this oath for you, you can do that.
But, we can't require it, and they can't make
the exercise of their power religious in nature.
So, you can't, as a government official, exercise your power
on religious grounds.
- [Kim] Something that strikes me about Article VI
is that it addresses so many different things.
Do you have a sense of why debts and constitutional
supremacy and religious tests are all in one article.
- [Michael] Article VI, as you said, is a little bit
of a grab bag.
It's not entirely clear how these different pieces
of Article VI relate to each other.
And, I think they were just things that the framers
wanted in the constitution and didn't know, for sure,
where else to put them.
- [Kermit] I'm not exactly sure why the debts are there.
If I had to say something about Article VI
it would be it's sort of the glue that holds
the constitutional architecture together.
So, maybe the debts are in there to explain
the continuity between the US government under
the Articles of Confederation and the US government
under the constitution.
Then, the supremacy clause explains how all of the
different parts of the federal system are supposed
to fit together.
And, what the supremacy clause is saying the constitution
is above all of them.
The constitution connects them all.
Everyone has to abide by the constitution.
And, it tells you the constitution is the highest law,
then you've got federal law, and then below that
is state law.
So that, if there's a conflict between federal law
and state law, the federal law is gonna win.
And then, the last part of Article VI is sort of
doing the same thing.
Because, what holds a country together?
What binds people into a single people?
In a lot of countries at the time of the founding
it was religion, right, religion was the glue
that held the society together.
And, if you weren't a member of that religion
you were an outsider or you were a second class citizen.
You would be shunned and not given equal rights
in some ways.
The last clause of Article VI says something
sort of similar about America, except it explicitly
says it's not religion that binds us together, right?
No religious tasks can be required but you do have
to take an oath.
What do you have to pledge to support?
You have to pledge to support the constitution.
So, there again, it's telling you the constitution
is what we all have in common.
That's what makes us Americans.
That really is the glue that binds our society together.
- [Kim] So, we've learned that Article VI is,
as Professor Roosevelt put it, the glue that binds
the country together.
In assuming the debts from the era of the Articles
of Confederation Article VI established the continuity
of the U.S. government.
It also placed the constitution, not religion,
as the supreme law of the United States.
To learn more about Article VI visit the
National Constitution Center's interactive constitution
and Khan Academy's resources on US government and politics.