Amendment XI.
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
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The thing to note about the Amendments to the United States Constitution is that without exception, they are all tacked on after the fact, to modify or clarify something inside the document, or to give spring to some new concept hitherto unrecognised within the document. In principle this either says that the original document was bad and/or the kosmos changed and/and/or the people affected by it finally had the clout to be able to effect the change.
11A is quite frankly strange and bizarre in most legal frameworks. 11A limits the scope and power of SCOTUS to decide cases which cross over state lines and where there might be a dispute, as well as cases which cross over national borders where there might be a dispute.
My reason for why I think that this is strange and bizarre, stems mainly from the United States's strange and bizarre legal conception of what republicanism is. In the United States of America, the United States is a person in its own right as corporation sole and that makes sense. The several States are persons in their own right as corporations sole and that also makes sense. But the fact that the United States is limited to not being able to rule on disputes which cross state borders because they want to keep the personhood of those several states not only distinct but jointly equal in status with that of the nation, leads to weirdness.
Once upon a time in English Law, there were local benches, then benches in Hundreds, the benches in Baronies and Counties, and finally upwards to the Supreme Court and the King Himself. So allergic is the United States to organised hierarchy and the insane fear that someone might actually get the power to do anything, that restraints such as 11A are imposed as a check to that imagined power. That's fine as a concept but in practice what this means is that an already clunky judiciary becomes even more clunky and instead of having national cases which might be able to impose a uniform ruling, the Federal Government and SCOTUS is legally unable and in fact barred from making any kind of ruling at all.
Suppose there was a wage case being argued by a combination of workers in the State of Jefferson and the head office of XYZ Co. was in the State of Kalmia. 11A means that this must be decided in one of those states. If XYZ Co. then has various manufactories in the States of Lincoln, MacKenzie and Norton, then a suit making a wage case must be launched in each of the several States of Jefferson, Kalmia, Lincoln, MacKenzie and Norton and SCOTUS and the lesser Circuit Courts are barred from deciding a national wage case. In my country, a national wage case would be decided by a Federal Industrial Relations Tribunal of some sort, or maybe even by the High Court itself. That is legally impossible in the United States due to 11A.
11A might have been sensible in 1795 when companies were small, but the rise of factories and the joint-stock corporation, and then the multi-national joint-stock corporation, makes a complete mockery of what 11A was intended to do. 11A as a handbrake on the imagined power of the United States' Federal Government, by design restricts its power to act; including when that power to act could have been really useful. 11A inadvertently could be a reason why the United States is one of the few countries in the OECD with no real Labour Party to speak of. Actual governance in many cases such as labour relations, education, the franchise, is either left to the several States or ceded to private concerns. The only people who really win out of this, are the killers, thieves, and lawyers, who can either exact and extort outrages across state lines, or who stand to make profits from suits which cross state lines and/or national borders.
Amendment XII.
The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;-the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. [And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.] The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice President, shall be the Vice President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
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12A is a ramshackling mess.
The Electoral College which was a stupid answer to a bad question, was in fact such a bad answer that it had to be changed pretty well much immediately.
The new form of government invented for the United States of America, is almost exclusively the design of Alexander Hamilton. I have no doubt that he meant well in considering how the mechanics of the House of Representatives and the Senate should operate and they're mostly a copy of the Houses of Commons and Lords in London, but when it came to the appointment of the President it is really obvious that Hamilton never thought beyond the tenure of George Washington and wanted to install him as King.
Hamilton's answer to appointing the President was so incredibly rubbish, that as soon as Washington got tired and stepped away, the next election in 1800 was an omnishambles. John Adams who had previously been Vice President and who described that office as the most insignificant office ever devised by man, won the election but the idiocy of Hamilton's design meant that the person with the next number of votes in the Electoral College became Vice President. The position fell to Thomas Jefferson; who it must be said absolutely hated Adams with the same kind of passion that Hamas and Likud have for each other. Of course Jefferson agitated for the system to be changed because he knew that he would probably (and subsequently did) assume the office of the President and did not want his Number Two to cling to his shoes like a number two.
12A stipulates that there are in fact two elections, and that at least one of the people who the electors vote for shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; which is presumably to stop a state for voting for their favourite son. In practice the "ticket" of a President and their nomination for the Vice President, means that the functional requirements of 12A are always met. So-called "Presidential Elections" are not strictly the case in that they are in fact "Presidential AND Vice Presidential Elections". On certificate day when the Electoral College certificates are opened and read and counted, there is not one election but two. Thus the ticket of Apple/Banana versus Morris/Norris are actually stapled elections. At time of writing, the two sets of tickets for the big parties are Trump/Vance and Harris/Walz.
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