Comprehensive Overview of Unit 2: AP Government - The Three Branches of Government

hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now in this video i'm going to take you through everything you need to

know about unit 2 of ap government and oh baby is this one a beast so get them brain cows ready for milking because we

have no time to waste let's get to it so unit 2 is all about the three branches of government and how they interact with

each other we're gonna start by talking about the legislative branch then we'll move on to the executive branch and then

we'll talk all about the judicial branch but we'll also talk about that kind of unofficial fourth branch of government

namely the bureaucracy hmm you smell that that smells like learning and it smells good you should

know that this video is part of my interview packet which has exclusive video content all the practice questions

your little heart could desire essential course questions and answers and basically everything you need to do well

in this course and on your exam in may you know if you're into that kind of thing to get that clicky finger out and

have at it okay let's begin with the legislative branch which is to say congress which is

the law making branch of the government structurally congress is made up of two houses and the word for that is

bicameral that means in order to pass a bill two camels are required to spit upon the legislation and that's how laws

are made that's not how laws are made but now i'm wondering if i even want to live in a country where laws are not

made that way anyway congress is made up of two houses and the first is the house of representatives in this house

representatives are apportioned by the population of each state more populous states have more representatives and

vice versa now representatives in the house are more closely tied to the people whom they represent for two

reasons first they only serve two-year terms and that means that they better listen to the people who elected them

because in two years they have to go right on back and ask them for another term second because a state is made up

of in most cases many districts house members represent fewer people and thus are able to know their constituency

better just for poops and giggles you should probably know that there are 435 representatives that make up the house

the second house of congress is the senate there are 100 senators because each state gets two if this history

teacher has his math right that means we have approximately 50 states now senators serve for six years and have a

few more constitutional responsibilities than do members of the house and i'll talk more about those in a minute but

because those senators represent an entire state they are all things being equal going to be less connected to the

intimate details of their constituency than house members taken together both houses of congress are required to pass

legislation they must agree on identical versions of the bills and then pass them on to the president for signing now you

should know that in doing this work of legislation coalitions are formed in order to make the process more efficient

these coalitions are formed in both houses but the durability of the working relationships are affected by term

length differences senate coalitions tend to be longer lasting and more durable while house coalitions can

change more often even though re-election rates tend to be high now let's talk about where congress gets its

power and for that you need to know two terms enumerated powers and implied powers enumerated powers are those

powers explicitly listed in article 1 section 8 of the constitution the enumerated powers of congress include

but are not limited to federal funding foreign policy and military legislation now under the heading of funding

congress has the power to raise revenue through taxation coin money for a uniform currency throughout the nation

and pass a federal budget under the heading of foreign policy and military legislation congress has perhaps the

most important and far-reaching foreign policy decision and that is to declare war to that end congress can raise

armies pass draft laws and direct funding to the armed forces okay so those are some of the enumerated powers

that congress holds but they also have implied powers this basically means that congress can pass any law that is

required by the enumerated powers and the justification for these powers comes at the end of article 1 section 8 and

it's known as the necessary and proper clause also known as the elastic clause by this power congress can pass a wide

range of legislation addressing economic environmental and social issues even if they're not explicitly mentioned in

article 1 section 8. for example alexander hamilton used the necessary improper clause to argue for the

establishment of a national bank article 1 section 8 says that congress can raise funds through taxation so you know

that's an enumerated power but it says precisely nothing about congress having the authority to establish a bank

however hamilton argued that if the federal government is going to be raising money it was necessary and

proper to establish a bank so his argument was that the need for a bank was implied by the power for raising

taxes okay now let's talk about the leadership structures in congress and we'll start with the house the

constitution only mentions one leader for the house and that's the speaker of the house and basically all it says is

that the house members will choose this leader now the speaker will always be a member of the majority party not because

that's what the constitution mandates but because this leader assumes his or her position by a vote and the majority

party isn't going to vote for somebody in the minority party now the speaker has significant power from recognizing

who can speak and who cannot do assigning representatives to committees now under the speaker are the majority

and the minority leaders and they basically direct debates and guide their party members and policy-making issues

then you have the whips one each for the majority and minority parties and whips are exactly what they sound like like if

representatives are a bunch of livestock then the whips get in there and make sure that their party is moving in the

same direction if a party member steps out of line so whips render party discipline and make sure members of the

party walk in line with the party goals then over in the senate you have a somewhat different leadership structure

there are two senate leaders mentioned in the constitution and the first is the president of the senate and that

privilege falls to the vice president of the united states now the vice president is a non-voting member of the senate

unless there's a tie and then the vice president can vote the second senate leader mentioned in the constitution is

the president pro tempore commonly known as the president pro tem this is the most senior member of the majority party

and has the authority to act as president of the senate when the vice president is not present which in modern

times is a lot okay the next rung down on the leadership structure is the senate majority leader which is in

practice much more powerful than the president and the president pro tem this person sets the legislative agenda by

determining which bills reach the floor for debate and which ones do not and then finally you have the whips who

function the same way in the senate as they do in the house okay so that's the basic leadership structure now let's

talk about how these representatives get their legislative work done and in both houses most of the work is done in

committees now committees are not required by the constitution but they're more of a practical necessity

essentially there's small groups of representatives who can debate and draft precise legislation that would otherwise

be impossible in the large group setting now there are four kinds of committees you need to know about first standing

committees which are committees that endure for a long time for example in the senate you have the standing

committee on the budget and in the house you have the house judiciary committee both of these are permanent committees

because they do work that always needs to be done from congressional session to congressional session it's standing

committees where new legislation begins and most bills never make it past that state second you have joint committees

which are groups that have members from both the house and the senate an example of this is the joint committee on the

library of congress third you have select committees which are temporary and created for a specific purpose like

they're basically the opposite of standing committees for example a select committee was formed to investigate

president richard nixon's watergate scandal and when that was done the committee was

dissolved and fourth you have conference committees now to understand the purpose of these committees you have to realize

that if a bill is going to become a law the bill must be passed by both houses in identical form so if the house passes

a bill to raise income tax by five percent and the senate has the same bill but added a provision to provide every

american household with a five gallon tub of nacho cheese per month well then they have to go into a conference

committee and work out the difference in that case i think it's obvious how to work it out get rid of the five percent

and give us the cheese now one last note about committees generally they serve the goals of the majority party since

they hold a majority of seats on each committee and the committee chair is always from the majority party okay now

all the committees i just mentioned are found in both the house and the senate but each house has different rules that

they follow for getting their work done house rules mandate limited debate and that's not hard to understand why like

compared to the senate the house has a metric butt load of representatives and if everyone talked as long as they

wanted to they'd never get anything done so the house limits its members to one hour for debate additionally the house

has the house rules committee which wields an awful lot of power this committee is the one that decides which

bills make it to the floor for debate which means that if this committee doesn't allow the bill through it

effectively dies the house also has a unique committee called the committee of the whole which theoretically includes

all 435 representatives although only a quorum of 100 is required to call this committee basically calling the

committee of the whole is just a procedural move that relaxes some of the rules for debate so that amendments for

bills can be considered and debated more quickly and the house also makes use of what's called a discharge petition so if

a bill gets stuck in a committee and the rest of the house wants to bring it out for consideration they can muster a

majority vote which will bring that bill out of the committee and into the house for consideration in voting but the

senate has a slightly different way of getting its work done in the senate the rules for debate are much more relaxed

because there are less members in the senate representatives can have unlimited time to debate bills and one

way that they can use that privilege to slow down a bill is by using the filibuster basically this is an attempt

to stall or kill a bill by talking for a very long time however the cloture rule is a way to get a filibustering senator

to shut it it requires a two-thirds vote which is to say 60 senators to shut down the filibuster and to bring the bill to

a vote now getting 60 senators to agree on this is a very difficult thing and it doesn't happen that often okay so the

senate also gets this work done through something called unanimous consent as a way of speeding legislation along before

they get to work the acting senate president asks all the senators if they will agree to limit debate and of course

this is a way of avoiding the possibility of a filibuster and since it requires unanimous agreement even one

senator can object which is called a hold and thus the bill under consideration can be stalled okay now

that we understand how each house of congress gets its work done let's talk about the basic process of how a bill

becomes a law first the bill has to be introduced and a member from either house can do that second a bill is

assigned to a committee and there it often undergoes some changes sometimes writers are added which are essentially

non-relevant additions which will usually benefit a representative's own agenda or alternatively it could be

something added to help get the bill passed sometimes pork barrel spending is added which are funds earmarked for

special projects in a representative's district and probably the most well-known occasion of pork barrel

spending became known as the bridge to nowhere basically there was a bill introduced to provide body armor for u.s

troops in iraq and an alaska senator thought you know nobody in their right mind is

going to vote against body armor for u.s troops so why don't we go ahead and add 400 million dollars for alaska in there

to build a bridge so you know the process can be a little sleazy anyway after the bill is marked up and amended

it comes back to the whole group where they vote on it you know in a perfect world representatives would just vote on

the merits of a bill but sometimes folks engage in log rolling this just means that representatives agree and say to

each other hey if you vote for my bill i'll vote for yours it's an elaborate system of congressional back scratching

but regardless if the bill gets a thumbs up then it heads to the president's desk for signing now before we move on as you

probably mentioned that arguably the most important legislative work done by congress is passing a federal budget now

most of the federal government's income is gathered from income taxes although there are other taxes and tariffs that

generate income as well and when it comes time for passing a budget congress has to allocate funds according to two

categories first is mandatory spending which is spending that is you know mandatory these are payments required by

law especially with respect to entitlement spending for example congress passed the social security act

and that means that they have to make those payments to retirees by law other big entitlement spending categories

include medicare and medicaid and mandatory spending also includes interest payments on debt of which there

is a metric but loop now after mandatory spending is accounted for everything that's left over is called discretionary

spending and so committees debate how to use these funds and the biggest recipient of discretionary spending by

far is paying federal employees now this is probably common sense but i'll say it anyway as mandatory spending otherwise

known as entitlement spending increases discretionary spending must decrease that is of course assuming that the

federal government operates on a balanced budget wouldn't that be hilarious if they did that no there are

always more opportunities to spend money than there is money available so there are two ways to increase discretionary

spending first congress can raise taxes and people generally don't like that second congress can approve an increase

in deficit spending the deficit basically just describes the gap between the budget and the funds available and

where does that money come from they borrow it okay now there is still more to talk about regarding how congress

gets its work done i've given you the mechanics of how they get their work done but now let's consider some of the

factors that might slow down or speed up how they get their work done factor number one is ideological divisions over

the last 30 years republicans have become more conservative and democrats have become more liberal which is a

phenomenon called political polarization this makes negotiation and compromise which are essential for passing

legislation very difficult and often leads to gridlock regarding policy so the quickest way for congress to get

things done in this atmosphere is for one party to have a majority in both houses of congress which means they can

just push their legislation through without an occasion for the minority to interrupt it if that's not the case then

generally anything that requires compromise gets stuck and slows the whole machinery down that slowdown could

be even worse when we have a divided government which is to say the president is from one party and both houses of

congress are from another for example in 2016 president obama a democrat had the occasion to appoint a new judge to the

supreme court and obviously he's going to choose a liberal judge but the republican-dominated senate argued that

since it was an election year they should wait to see who would win the presidency before they confirmed a new

judge you know obama was serving in the last months of his second term which made him a lame duck president which

basically means that he had very little power to do anything since he was on his way out of office so the senate simply

wouldn't hold a confirmation hearing but the situation was very different in 2020. that also was an election year and

republican president donald trump had the occasion to appoint a new justice and the republican senate rushed the

confirmation through without waiting on the outcome of the election so here you have a very good example of how a

divided government can slow things down and how a unified government can speed things up alright another factor that

affects the efficiency of the work that congress does is the different conceptions of their representative role

in determining how they vote some representatives follow the trustee model which means they believe that they have

been entrusted with the people's faith to vote according to the representative's best judgment a good

example of this is republican senator mitt romney's vote to remove donald trump from office this was a move that

the majority of his constituency did not support but he voted according to his best judgment other representatives

follow the delegate model which means that the representative believes that he or she must vote with the will of the

people even if it goes against their own better judgment you find this model more in the house since their two-year terms

make them more accountable to the people and then still other representatives adopt the politico model which is

basically just a blend of the other two for the politico how they vote depends on the situation like if there is a

strong public opinion on an issue the politico will consider that when voting and may act like a delegate if not they

will vote like a trustee okay now there's one more issue that you need to know with respect to the efficiency of

congressional work and that is redistricting and gerrymandering that sounds like two things heimlich i know

what i said but they're related to cool off anyway the constitution says that every 10 years a census must be taken to

find out how many people live in the united states and where they live then based on that information the number of

representatives for each state is a portion to reflect the population and then congressional districts are redrawn

to reflect those new seats so you've got reapportionment which is the doling out of representative seats and then you

have redistricting which is the redrawing of boundaries that those folks represent so this is a highly

contentious issue and things can get even more heated when districts are not reapportioned properly and to understand

that we need to talk about two required supreme court cases first is baker vs car in 1962. so by 1962 tennessee had

not redrawn its districts for over 60 years in that time the urban populations of tennessee had exploded while the

rural populations had grown much slower that meant that rural citizens had much more voting power than urban citizens or

to say it another way a minority of voters had a majority of the power precisely because districts had not been

redrawn so in this case the supreme court ruled that such a situation violated the equal protection clause of

the 14th amendment and out of this decision we got the one person one vote principle in other words districts must

be drawn in order to evenly distribute voting power additionally this case settled the question about whether

apportionment issues are justiciable which means whether or not the court can rule on such questions in case you're

not following the answer is yes the court can rule on apportionment issues because it is a constitutional issue not

a political issue the second case you need to know is shaw versus reno in 1993 which was similar to baker versus carr

in that it dealt with the drawing of congressional districts but in this case it considered the constitutionality of

drawing those districts based on race alone now in order to understand the outcome of this case you need to

understand the concept of gerrymandering basically this is a way of drawing districts and it's a little sleazy

because districts can be drawn to favor one group over another usually gerrymandered districts are drawn in

weird shapes which don't correspond at all to the natural features of the landscape and they're drawn that way to

ensure that a certain party has the advantage in that district and that is what's known as partisan gerrymandering

but shaw versus reno dealt with a different kind of gerrymandering known as racial gerrymandering which means

districts are drawn so that certain races constitute the majority in those districts so in this case two districts

in north carolina were drawn with strange shapes and created majority black districts which actually meant

that these districts had a very good chance of electing black folks to office thus upholding the provisions of the

voting rights act of 1965 for historically discriminated people however the court ruled that drawing

this district solely based on race even if it helped historically discriminated people was a dangerous practice and thus

unconstitutional so the point of everything i just said at length is to show you how all of these factors taken

together affect how well congress is able to do its job okay that was a lot but let's keep going and talk now about

the executive branch if you're weary after all that talk about congress then go get yourself one of those energy

drinks that have enough caffeine to kill a small horse let's continue so let's begin talking about how a

president can implement his or in the future perhaps her policy agenda now every president comes into office with a

set of policies that they want to see enacted but as you know by now it is congress that has constitutional

authority to pass laws not the president so how does the president get that policy agenda enacted well through

formal powers and informal powers the president's formal powers are laid out in article two of the constitution now

let's talk about a couple of them first and maybe most important of the president's formal powers is the veto as

i mentioned before if a bill is going to become a law then the president must sign it within 10 days of its arrival on

the executive desk if a particular law is not in line with the president's policy agenda then the president can

veto it which means the bill will not become a law at that point three things can happen number one the bill dies

everyone wipes a single tear off their face and life goes on two the bill is sent back to congress and they can add

or subtract items from the bill to make it more palatable to the president and if that happens that means that the bill

would have to start over completely and go through the entire process again and thus when a president even threatens a

veto it incentivizes congress to negotiate further before sending the bill to the presidential desk three

congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds vote which is very difficult to do now that's the

formal veto process but the president can also exercise informal powers with the veto an example of this is what i

just mentioned like the president threatens to veto and so that sends a signal to congress that they have to

work the bill into something that the president can sign the president can also employ the pocket veto

it was right there in my pocket all along remember that the president has 10 days to sign the bill into law but if a

bill shows up that does not align with the president's policy agenda and there are less than 10 days left in the

congressional session the president can do nothing with it let the session expire and the bill is effectively

vetoed on the other hand if there are more than 10 days left in the session and the president does not sign it the

bill then becomes a law now the president is also given formal powers with respect to foreign policy according

to article 2 the president is the commander-in-chief of the united states armed forces even so remember that the

president can't declare war that power belongs to congress but that can get a little murky because not every

deployment of troops equals a declaration of war for example president obama authorized navy seals to kill

osama bin laden in 2011. now with respect to foreign policy the president can enter into executive agreements with

other heads of state this isn't a treaty since treaty ratification is a power belonging to the senate but more like a

contract between a president and another president or monarch for example before the u.s entered world war ii president

roosevelt made an executive agreement with britain to provide u.s destroyers in exchange for 99-year leases on

certain uk naval bases okay now i've given you some of the formal powers of the presidency laid out in the

constitution and have dabbled in some of the more informal powers but now let's talk directly about those informal

powers the first informal power of the president is bargaining and persuasion we'll talk more about this in a moment

but essentially the president has the nation's attention in a way that no other politician does so the president

can use that attention to persuade the people according to the executive policy agenda another informal power is the

executive order and this is a directive from the president that has the force of federal law but it's not actually a law

that's confusing heimler well then let me explain it up real nice to you mainly executive orders direct the actions of

the federal bureaucracy and the military which are both areas the president does have direct authority over for example

by executive order the president can move money from one bureaucratic agency to another in order to get done what the

president wants to get done for example one of donald trump's central campaign promises was to build a wall on the u.s

mexico border and when congress wouldn't approve that funding trump declared a national emergency and by executive

order moved money from several executive agencies so that the work could begin another informal power of the president

is the signing statement so when signing a bill into law the president can also issue a signing statement which informs

the nation how the executive branch interprets that law and thus how the president intends to execute it which of

course could be different than the congressional version of the law okay now still keeping with the president's

policy agenda it won't surprise you to know that this agenda can conflict with the agendas of other branches of

government especially with congress and even more specifically with the senate so included in the president's power is

the ability to make federal appointments but those appointments have to be confirmed by the senate and that can

lead to some tension let me just give you some examples the president appoints a team of advisors which is known as the

cabinet these folks make up the heads of all the different executive agencies on which more in a moment and typically the

senate just lets these appointments cruise on through on the assumption that the president should be able to choose

their own staff however there are some cabinet appointments that get downright scrappy for example donald trump

nominated betsy devos as the education secretary because she made it clear that she would pursue the privatization of

education that made her a lot of enemies in the senate her confirmation hearing actually ended in a tie and that brought

vice president mike pence in the president of the senate to break the tie in devos's favor the president also

appoints ambassadors to other countries and usually the senate just confirms those folks without much drama the white

house staff is likewise appointed by the president but requires no senate confirmation at this point you're like i

thought you said there was tension here between these two branches like give us the drama all right you want the sauce

i'll give you the sauce the sauce comes when there's an opening for a federal court nomination more specifically the

supreme court nomination this is where things get highly contentious judges who are appointed to the supreme court hold

that job for the rest of their lives and that means that if a president appoints a judge who is favorable to the

presidential policy agenda the judge can rule in line with that agenda for many years to come after the president is no

longer in office not surprisingly conservative presidents appoint conservative judges and liberal

presidents appoint liberal judges and because of the long-term effects of this appointment it creates no small amount

of tension with the senators of the opposite party now you should know that over the course of us history the scope

of presidential power has expanded roughly three to four metric butt loads give or take reaching all the way back

to unit one this expansion of power in the executive branch is exactly what the anti-federalists were worried about in

fact they said that the presidency as it was laid out in the constitution was nothing less than the fetus of monarchy

but hark i see upon yonder shore a required document it's federalist 70 and in this essay hamilton argues that a

single executive was necessary because one person is able to act swiftly and decisively on matters that require firm

leadership and tactical decision making additionally hamilton argued that the executive branch can be checked with the

power of the other two branches so a presidential monarch would be an impossibility and finally if the

president does turn out to be a corrupt turd then it is much more easily detectable in a single individual than

in multiple and thus a single executive will have to be much more careful with their power since they will be much more

closely watched and ultimately as you already know that was the argument that won the day but even so as i mentioned

the power of the president has grown significantly over time george washington along with the first five

presidents who followed him basically yielded to congress's agenda since congress was the voice of the people

washington even stepped down after two terms to put the kibosh on any fears of an overbearing executive remember in

washington's day there was no limit on the number of terms a president can serve now later that was added to the

constitution in the 22nd amendment but still washington set the two-term precedent but then there was a

significant shift in presidential power in the presidency of andrew jackson he believed that the president was the

representative of the people and not congress and thus he expanded the power of the executive office to reflect that

the classic example here is the supreme court ruling that it was unconstitutional for the executive

branch to force the cherokee indians off of their land in georgia and yet jackson went ahead and did it anyway because

that's what in his mind the people wanted and then presidential powers expanded even further with abraham

lincoln he assumed way more power than any president before him and he's generally forgiven for it because he had

the civil war to fight most famously he suspended the constitutional right of habeas corpus which meant that he could

order people to be arrested without granting them a trial and then if there was ever a president who expanded

executive power it was our boy franklin roosevelt the man used the veto 635 times look in case you don't know that's

a lot like everybody broke out when andrew jackson used the veto 12 times in his tenure that was more than all the

presidents before him combined so fdr used the veto 635 times to which i say dang he was to say the least an

energetic executive he pushed his new deal programs through congress in order to address the devastating effects of

the great depression programs like social security and minimum wage laws and public works programs also fdr

served no less than four stinking terms as president now to be fair he did die in the first year of his fourth term but

still the man was elected four times so we're talking about expansion of federal power it really was fdr who gave us our

old friend big daddy government okay now let's talk about presidential communication and if there's one

advantage that the president has that no other branch does it's the eyes and ears of the nation and good presidents use

that attention to their advantage the term for this presidential communication comes from teddy roosevelt who said that

the presidency was a bully pulpit now the word bully doesn't mean then what it does now it just meant excellent in

other words roosevelt was enamored with the fact that he could speak directly to the people and that they would hopefully

in turn put pressure on their representatives to legislate in line with roosevelt's agenda and one of the

chief ways the president does this is through the annual state of the union address to congress now the

effectiveness of the presidential bully pulpit has changed as technology has advanced for a long time presidents did

give their state of the union addresses and those were filtered through newspaper editors but with the advent of

radio franklin roosevelt discovered that he could talk directly to the people without any intermediary and he did so

in his famous fireside chats where he explained in simple terms his policy proposals through the radio john f

kennedy was the first president to use the new medium of television to deliver live press conferences and that is when

you saw the creation of a presidential communication office which worked to refine and to shape the president's

talking points so that the president's policy agenda would succeed in the hearts and minds of the people and then

with the advent of social media the bully pulpit took on yet another form this was a massive innovation in

presidential communication because now the president had a way to speak to the people not only without an intermediary

but as often as the president wanted to barack obama appointed to social media as the key to winning his first campaign

by creating a stream of communication directly to his supporters through social sites to put it mildly donald

trump uh built on this innovation he was deeply suspicious of traditional news media and used twitter as his bully

pulpit to comment dozens of times a day on legislation his political enemies and foreign affairs in fact trump so often

used the twitter platform that he earned the nickname tweeter in chief all right with that let's move on to the

judicial branch we're going to start with how the courts are structured and then talk about how it checks the other

branches so in terms of the structure of the federal court system there are three levels at the bottom there are the u.s

district courts and there are 94 of those spread across the nation these courts have what's called original

jurisdiction which means that they have the right to hear a case for the first time on the next level you have the u.s

circuit court of appeals and there are 12 of these they have what's called appellate jurisdiction which means that

they hear appeals from the lower courts and the big daddy federal court sitting on top of the heap is the supreme court

which has both original and appellate jurisdiction depending on the kind of case being heard the supreme court is

the only one of these courts that is explicitly mentioned in the constitution and that is in article 3. all the other

courts i mentioned are created by congress in the judiciary act of 1789. now wouldn't you know it there is a

required document associated with the supreme court namely federalist 78. this essay hamilton argued that the

independence of the judicial branch acted as a protection for its power where does the court get such

independence well from the lifetime appointment of its judges if the judges aren't answerable to the voters that

means that they can rule on cases without the pressure of trying to get reelected hamilton also argued that the

court has the right of judicial review which means it's the court's job to declare laws constitutional or

unconstitutional it's through this power that the supreme court has the power to check the other branches of government

now this power isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution and that's where the required case of marbury

versus madison in 1803 comes in now i'm not going to go through all the details of this case but what you really need to

remember is that it was the court's ruling in this case that firmly cemented the power of judicial review in the

supreme court's purview and that had the effect of significantly increasing the power of the supreme court in the

constitution the supreme court was kind of like steve rogers trying to sign up for the army but after marbury the court

is like steve rogers coming out of that pod with his muscles all jacked and twitching okay now let's talk about how

the court works as they're considering their cases the role of precedence is of extreme importance so when a decision is

handed down it creates a precedent which means that unless there are some very extreme circumstances this decision will

act as a binding template for future decisions you know precedents are very hard to overturn because of a principle

to which the court holds namely starry decisis which when being translated means let the decision stand so if the

court receives a case on a topic that has already been decided it will often rule in the same way as the previous

case however although it is rare precedence can be overturned as it was for example in brown versus the board of

education on which more in unit 3. now the supreme court by comparison is less bound to precedence than the lower

courts but even so precedents still serve to guide present decisions in a very significant way now when it comes

to upholding or overturning precedence the court's activity falls under two headings judicial activism or judicial

restraint judicial activism is the idea that the court acts to establish policy and considers more than just the

constitutionality of a decision it also considers the decision's broader effects on society brown versus the board of

education is an important example of that and activism in the court can either be liberal or conservative okay

now on the other side of the spectrum is judicial restraint and the idea here is that judges believe that they aren't

appointed to make policy like the elected legislature exists for that if judges act according to judicial

restraint they believe that a law should only be struck down if it violates the actual written word of the constitution

and then the ideology of the judges also plays a role in how the court makes his decisions as well presidents appoint

judges that align with their own political sympathies and this has a role in whether the court will remain bound

to previous precedents or create a new one for example since the 70s conservative presidents have appointed

conservative judges to the court in hopes of overturning the president established in roe v wade which made

abortion legal in all 50 states now so far that effort has been unsuccessful but it illustrates the point that

ideology plays a role in the court's decisions now probably not going to surprise you to hear that as the court

has exercised its power of judicial review it has often led certain groups of americans to question the legitimacy

of the court's power and this is especially true when controversial decisions are handed down for example in

the landmark case of dred scott versus sanford in 1857 the court essentially ruled that slavery was permissible in

all states now if you know your u.s history you'll know that in 1857 the country was coming apart at the seams

over the slavery question and so when the court handed down this decision no small amount of abolitionists and

anti-slavery crusaders called into question the legitimacy of the supreme court like how in the world can these

unelected judges overturn all the legislation that has kept the north free of slavery when the court hands down a

decision it effectively becomes the law of the land but there are some ways that the other branches can reduce the impact

of those decisions the president can appoint new judges as the opportunity arises for example i just mentioned roe

v wade a second ago evangelical christians have been trying to get that overturned for a long time and their

chief way of doing it in the 2016 election was to elect donald trump and when asked why they voted for a man

whose ethics are so opposed to christianity their response was for the court nominations now another way the

president can mitigate court decisions is by a lack of enforcement for example the court ruled that it was

unconstitutional for the federal government to remove cherokee christians from their lands in georgia and andrew

jackson went ahead and did it anyway then congress can also check the power of the judicial branch and they do this

through legislation for example congress invalidated the dred scott decision by passing the 13th amendment to the

constitution which abolished slavery additionally congress passed the 11th amendment which limited the court's

jurisdiction thus restricting the kinds of cases that can even be heard in the supreme court and with that it's time to

turn the last corner in this video and talk about the federal bureaucracy now the bureaucracy is not a separate

branch of government although sometimes you'll hear people referred to it as the fourth branch of government technically

the bureaucracy falls under the authority of the executive branch and it's made up of millions of people who

are employed to carry out the responsibilities of the federal government so why don't we begin by

talking about the structure of the bureaucracy and then we'll see how it gets its work done in terms of structure

the highest level of authority in the bureaucracy falls to the cabinet secretaries these are the leaders of the

15 executive departments like the department of energy the department of homeland security or the biggest of all

the department of defense and then these departments are further subdivided into agencies which all work together to

accomplish the goals of the department for example the department of the treasury has all kinds of tax collecting

agencies within it like the internal revenue service or the irs so the way it works in this case is that congress

passes tax legislation then it's up to these agencies to make sure that taxes are actually collected another part of

the bureaucratic structure is commissions these are regulatory groups who operate somewhat independently of

the authority of the president but still fall under the executive authority they're run by a board of individuals

and they're usually created for a specific purpose for example you have the fcc or the federal communications

commission which regulates the content of media not by censoring free speech but by making sure that nothing

inappropriate is displayed and then yet another part of the bureaucratic structure is government corporations

which are kind of like a hybrid between a business and a government agency basically the government acquires

businesses when they want to offer a public good but the free market is the best way to offer that service a good

example of this is pbs which produces educational media now when it comes to the actual work of the bureaucracy

here's what they do first they write and enforce regulations but it's important to remember the distinction here the

bureaucracy is not creating laws congress is responsible for that the bureaucracy is only making a set of more

refined rules that help facilitate the execution of the law for example the 16th amendment establishes the income

tax but there's nothing about how those taxes are going to be collected it was the irs who determined that taxes are

due by april 15th and how we are to pay them so this is what's known as delegated discretionary authority and by

definition it's the authority given to the bureaucracy by congress that gives them the discretion on how to make the

rules and carry out the laws and another part of this authority is compliance monitoring which means that the

bureaucratic agencies establish rules for certain industries and then have to do the work of making sure those

industries are complying with those rules now look this can slow down policy implementation but the alternative is

lacks oversight which would essentially invalidate the regulations they exist to implement the second thing that

bureaucracy does is issue fines when laws are violated and third heads of agencies will often testify before

congress either to be held accountable for their actions or just to give an update on the work of their agency now

these bureaucratic agencies often work very closely with other entities and i want to mention one relationship that

you really need to know and it's called an iron triangle on the three points are bureaucratic agencies congressional

committees and interest groups and these groups often work together and rely on one another to create policy bureaucrats

offer expertise to congressional committees with whom they are eager to cooperate since its congress who

approves funding for their departments and the committee members want to pay attention to interest groups because

they often have policy experts who can inform them of the implications of certain policies and then interest

groups can provide funding for congressional races and with all this mutual benefit the relationship between

the three grows very strong and that is why it's called an iron triangle not an overcooked noodle triangle because you

know i mean overcooked noodles are kind of weak and structurally they can't hold much you know it'd be a bad metaphor for

a strong anyway for your exam you need to know the names and purposes of seven of these bureaucratic departments i'm

not going to tell you everything these departments are responsible for i'm just going to give you a couple examples

first is the department of homeland security which protects the u.s from terrorism and maintains and controls the

nation's borders second is the department of transportation which manages all kinds of transportation like

highway and air travel third is the department of veterans affairs which manages veterans hospitals and the

general welfare of america's veterans fourth is the department of education which oversees states in their

implementation of federal educational standards fifth is the environmental protection agency which works to protect

the environment and human health through industrial regulation sixth is the federal elections commission which

administers and enforces campaign finance laws and then seventh is the securities and exchange commission which

regulates the stock market and prevents fraud now all the leadership in these entities are folks whom the president

appoints and if the bureaucracy doesn't act sufficiently in accordance with the president's policy agenda the president

can fire them and appoint new leaders in cabinet and agency positions although the president cannot fire regulatory

commission heads and often not surprisingly the president tries to staff those positions with folks

sympathetic to the executive goals even so commission heads serve fixed terms that overlap and outlast any given

president so while the president does have a lot of influence over these entities the president's influence isn't

total so all of these departments and agencies and commissions i just listed along with hundreds of others are

basically the law enforcement apparatus of the executive branch but their power in this regard can still be checked by

other branches of government because congress is responsible for making sure that laws are upheld along the lines in

which they were passed they can hold committee hearings to ensure such execution is happening congress has many

committees that correspond to the bureaucracy's agencies and will call directors of those agencies to testify

and give reports of their progress and sometimes this is just a friendly check-in other times it can be

tense but congress also has another way to check the bureaucracy and that's because congress is the entity who's

holding all the hooch in its pockets through the power of the purse congress can decide how to allocate funds to

different agencies and agencies cannot spend their money until a committee or sub-committee authorizes them to do so

the president can also check the bureaucracy and this is usually the first line of defense since it falls

under the president's authority for example president clinton initiated a national performance review in which the

various agencies were required to scrutinize and change if necessary its mission and objectives you didn't think

the judicial branch was going to miss out on all this power checking fund digit when citizens believe that the

bureaucratic decisions are unconstitutional they can challenge them in court and usually unless the agencies

are blatantly violating a law the court upholds the authority of the agency and the legitimacy of the bureaucracy has

been challenged over time specifically regarding its independence these agencies and commissions create rules

and regulations that do have the force of law but as you no doubt know by this point they are not elected

representatives and thus are not accountable to the people and this has a way of chapping the american thighs you

also need to know that the way people have been chosen to work in the bureaucracy has changed over time back

in the first hundred years or so of our history people were given bureaucracy jobs based on the patronage system which

means that these jobs were a way for the president to award those who supported his campaign and that system was in

place for a long time but it kind of went sideways when president garfield was assassinated basically garfield

didn't give a bureaucratic job to a man who supported his campaign so that man went ahead and shot the president so

clearly there needed to be some reform on that count and there was after the garfield assassination congress passed

the pendleton civil service act in 1883 which created a merit system for bureaucratic appointments so now you had

to pass a competitive examination in order to get one of those sweet bureaucratic jobs and that reform

continued into the 20th century in order to make the bureaucracy more professional specialized and neutral for

example under jimmy carter's administration we got the civil service reform act which upheld the merit system

but made further reforms to help offer wider opportunities for women more efficient control of human resource

departments etc and that's it oh my goodness that was a giant unit but i hope it helped and if you want more help

getting an a in your class and a five on your exam in may you can click right over here and grab the ultimate review

packet if this video helped you you want me to keep making them then you can let me know that by subscribing heimler out