Congressional Powers, Part 2 (LAW-CONST1)

Article I lets Congress fund an army only two years at a time. The Navy carries no such limit. Akhil Reed Amar explains the geostrategic logic behind the asymmetry.

This lecture works through the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 and reads them as a coherent design rather than a list. Amar argues for a broad sense of "commerce" that covers foreign affairs, navigation, immigration, and interstate relations, since no other clause plausibly supplies those powers. He treats the Necessary and Proper Clause on two axes: as federalism, where the pointed omission of the word "expressly" grants implied powers while the word "proper" bars pretextual ones, and as separation of powers, where it makes Congress first among equals, setting the number of courts, cabinet offices, and Supreme Court seats. The lecture covers McCulloch v. Maryland and John Marshall's national security case for the Bank of the United States, the militia as a check on federal usurpation and its abuse by the Confederacy, and the pointed silences at the end of Article I, where nothing forbids the states from holding people in slavery.