and today I'm learning more about Article VI

of the U.S. Constitution.

Article VI is as we'll soon see

kind of a constitutional grab bag.

It covers debts, religious tests for office

and it establishes the Constitution

as the supreme Law of the Land.

To learn more about what binds these diverse ideas together,

I sought out the help of two experts.

Kermit Roosevelt is a Professor of Law

specializing in constitutional law and conflict of laws

at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

And Michael Ramsey is Professor of Law

and Director of International and Comparative Law programs

at the University of San Diego's School of Law.

So let's start out talking

about the debts portion of Article VI.

Professor Roosevelt, why were the framers

so interested in debt?

What was the historical context that led them

to explicitly address debt in Article IV?

- [Professor Roosevelt] Well, debt is important generally

because nations often need to borrow money.

And specifically with the Constitution

and the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. government

had been borrowing money to pay for the Revolutionary War.

So there was a question we're moving

from a sort of loose confederation,

almost like a treaty between nations,

under the Articles of Confederation,

to a single unitary country

with a stronger national government under the Constitution.

And there's a question, is it still the same country?

Will the new United States pay the debt?

So the old United States.

- [Professor Ramsey] Now, there's a general principle

of international law that a successor government

undertakes the obligations of the predecessor.

So you wouldn't necessarily think this would be a problem

but I think they were particularly concerned

because the idea of a republic was a somewhat new,

and at least in the 18th century a somewhat unusual one.

And the change of a republican government

might cause some worries in Europe

where this money was owed.

So I think they just wanted to reassure all of the creditors

that even if they were changing their method of government,

that that wasn't going to effect any of the debts.

- [Kim] What might have happened had they decided

not to pay those debts?

- [Professor Roosevelt] If they had decided

not to pay the debts, then other countries

would probably have been much less willing

to lend money to the new United States.

Because they might have thought,

well you know another change in government could occur.

- [Professor Ramsey] There was substantial question

throughout the world whether the United States

would be able to survive in the face of all the challenges

that they had after gaining their independence.

So in order to make it seem that the United States

was a country that could be trusted,

a country that could be expected to stick around

and not collapse in the chaos or revert to colonial status,

one of the most important things for them

was to show that the debts would be honored.

Because a failure to honor debts

would suggest that the country did not in fact

have true sovereignty and was not prepared to be an actor

on the international stage that could be trusted.

- [Professor Roosevelt] Another interesting thing

to contrast this to is the treatment of debts

after the Civil War.

Where of course the United States, the federal government,

paid its own debts but there's a provision

in the 14th amendment explicitly repudiating

the Confederate debt.

So if you loaned money to the Confederate States of America,

you're never getting that back.

Because we didn't treat that as a valid government

that would be continued going forward.

- [Professor Ramsey] Another thing that it illustrates

is that the Constitution in some respects

was a visionary document that was concerned

with the long term future of the United States

but in other respects, it responded to very immediate,

practical problems that the framers faced in their day.

They were thinking about not just the future

of the country for the ages, they were thinking about that

but they weren't thinking just about that.

They were also thinking about reassuring France

with respect to the debts that existed right at that moment.

- [Kim] So there's a lot going on in Article VI

and specifically it talks about the Constitution

as the supreme Law of the Land.

So what's important about that statement?

- [Professor Roosevelt] What's important about that

is that it means the Constitution is our highest law.

It prevails over any other kind of law in a conflict.

So one thing that that means

is the Constitution is supreme over state law.

And then the Constitution actually goes on

to talk about that a little bit more.

But it also means the Constitution is supreme

over federal law.

So everyone is bound by the Constitution.

The states can't go against it, congress can't go past it,

the president can't violate constitutional restrictions.

The Constitution is really the last word.

It's the pinnacle or the keystone

of the arch of American democracy.

- [Professor Ramsey] And that's why we can say

that things are unconstitutional,

that laws are unconstitutional and therefore invalid.

And most importantly, it's why the Supreme Court can say

that laws are unconstitutional and invalid.

It creates a superior law that limits the laws

that can be passed by the other parts of the government.

It creates a hierarchy of laws and in doing so,

it assures that we have a single set of rules

that applies to all the states and to the federal government

and it can't be changed except by an amendment.

Which is relatively difficult to do.

There's a procedure in the Constitution

for how you can amend the Constitution

but until amending, the Constitution as written

is our superior law.

And that was different from the way that the framers,

the rules the framers were used to under the English system,

where they didn't have a written Constitution.

They had an unwritten Constitution but that Constitution

was subject to change by Parliament.

- [Kim] So has this supremacy

of the Constitution been tested over time?

- [Professor Roosevelt] There haven't been a lot

of claims that the Constitution is not supreme.

So generally speaking, everyone gives

at least lip service to this idea.

What's been tested is more the question

of who gets to decide what the Constitution means

and when something conflicts with it.

So if you want the Constitution

and federal law to be supreme,

probably you would want to have someone

in the federal government deciding

when there's a conflict say with state law.

And the forms that resistance has taken over the years

are more states saying

not you know we can go against the Constitution,

we're above the Constitution,

but states saying we don't think what we're doing

violates the Constitution.

Right, and you the Supreme Court, you think it does

but you're wrong.

- [Professor Ramsey] In the 19th century,

just before the Civil War,

the Supreme Court decided in the Dread Scott case

that African Americans could not be citizens

to the United States even if they were freed slaves.

And President Lincoln believed that that was wrong.

He said that there was nothing in the Constitution

that denied the ability of them to be citizens.

And he said that the Supreme Court

had misinterpreted the Constitution

and he would not accept the Supreme Court's ruling

in that regard.

Later, in the 20th century, the Supreme Court held

that the Constitution barred segregation

particularly in schools

in the Brown versus Board of Education case.

But many southern governors and other institutions

throughout the south thought

that the Supreme Court had gotten that one wrong.

And they refused to abide by what the Supreme Court had said

the Constitution means.

- [Professor Roosevelt] What they said was not

the Constitution doesn't bind us

but we know what the Constitution means

better than you Supreme Court, you're wrong,

you're making this up, it's political, it's not judging.

- [Kim] Another thing that Article VI talks about

is religious tests.

Why were the framers so interested

in preventing religious tests in government?

What sort of historical evils were they trying to prevent?

- [Professor Roosevelt] So this is connected

to the basic idea of the separation of church and state.

And you separate church and state

really to protect both of those things.

So you want to protect religion from being corrupted

by political considerations

but you also want to protect your political system

from being a battle ground between rivaled religions.

- [Professor Ramsey] So where this comes from is

that in England, they had had a series

of what they called Test Acts.

And what the Test Acts did was it required

that for people to be eligible for government offices

that the people had to be members of the Church of England.

And that other religious groups,

they were barred by the Test Acts

from holding government office.

So actually, many of those minority religions,

many adherence of those ended up coming

to the American Colonies to gain some measure

of religious freedom.

The pilgrims were an example of that.

There was a Catholic colony in Maryland.

And just generally speaking, many of the people,

many of the colonists who came over

were people who were not part

of the main established church in England.

And so you can see why they would not want to have

something like the Test Acts.

And they wanted to make clear

that in the new national government

that any religion, or no religion

would be allowed for government office holders.

- [Kim] Do you think it's true

that we don't have religious tests or oaths

in the United States?

How about the practice of swearing on a Bible

during the presidential inauguration?

- [Professor Roosevelt] Well the practice of swearing

on a Bible is very interesting as is the fact

that when the president recites the oath of office,

every president going back to George Washington

has added on to the end of it, so help me God.

There's actually an oath in the Constitution

the president has to swear to preserve,

protect and defend the Constitution

but the Constitution doesn't say so help me God.

The presidents just add that on on their own.

And actually that sort of illustrates the way

in which the Constitution treats religion.

Which is it can't be part of government

in an official sense.

But we know that members of government are also people

and they have religious beliefs that are important to them

and we don't demand that they exclude religion

from their lives, we just demand

that it be separated from government authority.

So you can swear on a Bible if you want to,

you don't have to.

You can swear on some other religious book.

We had a member of congress

take an oath of office on a Quran.

So individual government officials are allowed to