U.S. constitutional law is a complex system made up of a combination of federal and state constitutional law with considerable distinctiveness.

The federal constitution is small in size, simple in construction, and extremely capacious and elastic in content. It includes only seven articles. It should be mentioned, however, that the articles of the American Constitution are much longer than those of modern constitutions and are in fact sections (from the point of view of today’s understanding of constitutional structure). These qualities have given the Constitution its stability as a legal document. It is among the “super rigid” constitutions. Amendments require at least 2/3 of both houses of Congress to vote for it, and then it must be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures. The adopted amendments do not change the text of the constitution itself, but are appended to the text and placed after the main text under the appropriate number (only 27 amendments have been adopted during its existence).

However, the terse written U.S. Constitution is not the whole U.S. Constitution. For more than 200 years the constitutional gaps not covered by the written constitution have been filled by a myriad of regulations:

• Acts of Congress;
• Supreme Court decisions;
• acts of the president;
• decisions of state legislatures;
• judicial precedents.

This set of normative-legal acts, which develop, supplement and specify the provisions of the written Constitution of 1787, was called “the living Constitution”, which really regulates different spheres of life of the American society and state.

The U.S. Constitution mainly regulated the issues of the U.S. government organization:

• The organization, powers, and election procedures of the U.S. Congress;
• The status and powers of the President of the Republic and the order of his election;
• The structure, formation and powers of the Supreme Court;
• issues of organization of the federation.

“The Bill of Rights and the Fundamentals of Individual Legal Status
The first 10 amendments, called the Bill of Rights, were passed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1789-1791. They were concerned with regulating the basics of personal legal status. However, the U.S. Constitution of 1787 (or, to be more precise, a series of amendments to it) regulates only the most basic, from the American legislator’s point of view, human rights and freedoms:

• freedom of speech;
• freedom of the press;
• freedom of petition;
• freedom of assembly;
• personal liberty (with the prohibition of slavery);
• freedom of conscience;
• the right to inviolability of the home;
• the right to a speedy and public trial by jury;
• the right not to testify against oneself;
• prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments;
• the right to bear arms;
• right of property.

According to American doctrine, socio-economic and cultural rights are not among the fundamental rights and are not reflected in the constitution, and it is unlikely that they could have been included: the constitutional consolidation of these rights entered into world practice only after World War II (in new and modern constitutions).

US Congress. Structure, the order of election, powers
According to the Constitution of the USA, state power is divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

The supreme legislative body is the U.S. Congress, which consists of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The House of Representatives represents the interests of the people as a whole. The constitutional composition of the House is 435 deputies (called “congressmen”). The term of office is two years. Elections to the House of Representatives are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of each even-numbered year.

Members of the House of Representatives are elected under a majority relative majority system without a quorum requirement. Each state elects a number of representatives proportional to the population of the state, with the expectation that one representative will be elected from approximately equal numbers of voters, with each state having at least one representative in Congress. Elections are held in single-member districts. The House of Representatives cannot be dissolved early.

A member of the House of Representatives may be elected:

• A U.S. citizen who has held U.S. citizenship for at least seven years;
• at least twenty-five years of age;
• A resident of the state in which the electoral district is located.
  The Senate is the “upper” house of Congress and represents the interests of the states. It consists of 100 senators, two from each state, elected for six-year terms. Every two years 1/3 of the senators are elected. Like the House of Representatives, the Senate is elected by a majority relative majority system.