Congressional Powers, Part 1 (LAW-CONST1)

The Revolution's slogan was no taxation without representation, not no taxation. Akhil Reed Amar shows how that distinction gave the new Congress a power Parliament had been denied.

This lecture moves from the shape of Congress to its powers, opening with an image of Henry Clay addressing an antebellum Senate under a full public gallery. Amar uses it to make two points: Congress is the branch that works in the open, and it is a place built for speech. He reads the Speech and Debate Clause of Article I as a free speech guarantee more absolute than the First Amendment, since no libel suit reaches a senator's words on the floor. He then turns to Article I, Section 8, the longest section of the longest article, and frames it through the question that broke the British Empire: which matters belong to the center, and which to the parts. Parliament claimed all of them and lost the colonies; the Confederation Congress claimed too few and went broke. Section 8 is the attempt to get the balance right, beginning with the power to lay and collect taxes.