What is the significance of elastic clause

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:. The institution of Congress is responsible for carrying out the legislative duties of the federal government.

The powers of Congress are enumerated in Article I of the Constitution. They preferred a government with power vested in the legislature, which they considered most representative of the people, rather than one where the executive was preeminent. They associated the executive branch with the British monarchy, which they had fought against in the Revolutionary War, so they relegated the presidency to the second article of the Constitution.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. Congress was granted tremendous political power by the founders. The Constitution lists a number of specific powers entrusted to Congress. Congress is assigned the power to declare war and to raise an army and navy. Congress has the right to propose amendments to the Constitution and to create new states. To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;.

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;. To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;. There may even be a clause in her contract by which she has to agree to certain content restrictions. Accordingly, the question "How far does the note issue under the new system seem likely to prove an elastic one?

The sputum of more advanced cases resembles that of chronic bronchitis, with the addition of tubercle bacilli and elastic fibers. He added that lessening clause, remembering, quite simply, how much more brilliant he was than Nigel. Industrial society is therefore mobile, elastic, standing at any moment in a temporary and unstable equilibrium. Clauses 1—17 of Article 1 enumerate all of the powers that the government has over the legislation of the country.

Clause 18 gives Congress the ability to create structures organizing the government, and to write new legislation to support the explicit powers enumerated in Clauses 1— The definitions of "necessary," "proper," and "carrying into execution" have all been debated since the words were written during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in There is a strong possibility that it was kept purposefully vague. In general, the main purpose of this "elastic" clause, also known as the "sweeping" or "general clause," is to give Congress the flexibility to get the other 17 enumerated powers achieved.

Congress is limited in its power over the American people to only those powers specifically written into the Constitution, such as determine who can be a citizen, collect taxes, establish post offices, and set up a judiciary. The existence of that list of powers implies that Congress can make laws necessary to ensure that those powers can be carried out.

Clause 18 makes that explicit. For example, the government could not collect taxes, which power is enumerated as Clause 1 in Article 1, Section 8, without passing a law to create a tax-collecting agency, which is not enumerated. Clause 18 has been used for all sorts of federal actions including requiring integration in the states—for instance, whether a National Bank can be created implied in Clause 2 , to Obamacare and the ability of states to legalize the growing and distribution of marijuana both Clause 3.

In addition, the elastic clause allows the Congress to create the hierarchical structure to enact the other 17 clauses: to build a lower court Clause 9 , to set up an organized militia Clause 15 , and to organize a post office distribution method Clause 7.

According to Article 1, section 8, of the Constitution, Congress has the following 18 powers and only the following powers:. The 18th clause was added to the Constitution by the Committee on Detail without any previous discussion at all, and it was not the subject of debate in Committee, either. That was because the original intent and wording of the Section was not to enumerate Congress's powers at all, but instead to provide an open-ended grant to Congress to "legislate in all cases for the general interests of the Union, and also to those to which the States are separately incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation.

However, Clause 18 was hotly debated in the ratification stage. Opponents objected to the 18th clause saying it was evidence that the Federalists wanted unlimited and undefined powers.

The Anti-Federalist delegate from New York, John Williams — , said with alarm that it is "perhaps utterly impossible fully to define this power," and "whatever they judge necessary for the proper administration of the powers lodged in them, they may execute without any check or impediment. The 'sweeping clause' should only be extended to the enumerated powers. In his finding over the McCulloch v. Maryland case, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall — defined "necessary" to mean "appropriate and legitimate.

Earlier, James Madison — said there had to be an obvious and precise affinity between the power and any implementing law, and Alexander Hamilton — said that it meant any law that might be conducive to the implemented power.

Notwithstanding the long-term debate over what "necessary" means, the Supreme Court has never found a congressional law unconstitutional because it was not "necessary. However, more recently, the definition of "proper" was brought up in Printz v. Opponents said it was not "proper" because it interfered with state's rights to set their own laws.

Sebelius because it was deemed not "proper. Over the years, the interpretation of the elastic clause has created much debate and led to numerous court cases about whether or not Congress has overstepped its bounds by passing certain laws not expressly covered in the Constitution.

Maryland The issue at hand was whether the United States had the power to create the Second Bank of the United States, which had not been expressly enumerated in the Constitution.

Further at issue was whether a state had the power to tax that bank. The Supreme Court decided unanimously for the United States: They can create a bank in support of Clause 2 , and it can't be taxed Clause 3. John Marshall, as the Chief Justice, wrote the majority opinion which stated that the creation of the bank was necessary to ensure that Congress had the right to tax, borrow, and regulate interstate commerce—something that was granted it in its enumerated powers—and therefore could be created.

The government received this power, said Marshall, through the Necessary and Proper Clause. The court also found that individual states did not have the power to tax the national government because of Article VI of the Constitution which stated that that national government was supreme.

In the late 18th century, Thomas Jefferson had been against Hamilton's desire to create a National Bank, arguing that the only rights that had been given to Congress were those which were in fact spelled out in the Constitution.