Our Constitution

This is the eleventh episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. Thomas Jefferson attributes seventeen of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence to King George III exclusively, and ten to King George and Parliament. The first of these ten, Grievance 13, charges that Parliament, which Jefferson refers to as the “others,” has no authority over the colonies. Consequently, the King’s implementation of Parliament’s laws in the colonies is an act of tyranny. The Framers of the Constitution debated the extent to which the British Parliament should serve as a model for the new Congress and avoided Parliament’s problems of virtual representation and rotten boroughs by providing under the Constitution for a census and redistricting every ten years.

This is the tenth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. After General Thomas Gage, the commander of British forces in North America, was appointed royal governor of Massachusetts and placed Boston under martial law, many Americans believed that the Crown had upended the proper structure of government by making military authorities superior to civil officials. This episode explores the intellectual and historical roots of Grievance 12 and its role in shaping America’s later constitutional structure.

This is the ninth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. In colonial America, peacetime standing armies were often viewed as tools that monarchs could use to wield power over the populace rather than protect the people’s security. This episode examines the source of that view; Grievances 11 and 14, which alleged that the King kept armies in places in Boston and quartered troops among the civilian population; and the influence of these experiences on the Constitution.

This is the eighth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. This episode further explores the Declaration’s tenth grievance by examining how the King’s officials allegedly deprived the colonists of their rights as Englishmen in their efforts to enforce the Navigation Acts. These experiences, which included the crown’s prosecution of John Hancock, resulted in the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches, the Fifth Amendment’s right to indictment by a grand jury, and other protections for criminal defendants under the Constitution.

This is the seventh episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. This episode addresses the Declaration’s tenth grievance that British customs officers and other royal officials often acted arbitrarily or used their powers to harass and abuse colonists. Among other things, the episode examines colonist James Otis’s argument that British law allowing warrantless searches in the colonies should be void because such searches violate natural rights and rights protected by the British constitution. While Otis lost his case, his argument is reflected in the Constitution’s recognition of two tiers of law—the Constitution and laws Congress adopts pursuant to the Constitution. As a consequence, laws that would override the Constitution, including the fundamental rights enshrined in it, can only be adopted by amending the Constitution.