The Constitution of the United States in Outline

In one line

Seven Articles create the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, define the relations between the States, provide for amendment, declare supremacy and provide for ratification, and twenty seven Amendments have been added since.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Constitution of the United States, framed in 1787, ratified in 1788 and in operation from 4 March 1789, consists of a Preamble and seven Articles, and has been amended twenty seven times; it runs to about seven thousand six hundred words and is the oldest written national constitution still in force.

The Preamble

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Two things are worth noticing. It says the People and not the States, which is the textual root of the answer given in Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700 (1869), that the Union is indestructible. And it confers no power; the American Supreme Court has treated it as a statement of purpose only, unlike the Indian Preamble after Kesavananda.

Article I: the legislature

Sections 1 to 6: composition. All legislative powers granted are vested in a Congress of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The House is elected every two years by the people of the several States; the Senate has two senators from each State, since the Seventeenth Amendment elected by the people, for six years, one third renewed every two years. Each House judges the elections and qualifications of its own members, determines the rules of its proceedings, punishes its members and may expel by two thirds. Section 6 provides the speech or debate privilege and the incompatibility rule that no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House.

Section 7: how a Bill becomes law. Revenue Bills originate in the House; every Bill must pass both Houses and be presented to the President; a veto is overcome by two thirds of each House; ten days' silence makes it law unless Congress's adjournment prevents return.

Section 8: the powers of Congress. Eighteen clauses, from taxation and borrowing through the regulation of commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, naturalisation, bankruptcy, coinage, post offices, patents and copyrights, inferior tribunals, piracy, war, armies, navy, the militia and the seat of government, ending with the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying the foregoing powers into execution. That last clause is what McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819), construed.