The Ambiguity Of The Elastic Clause

The United States Constitution serves as the document that provides the framework for the manner in which the country is governed. Since the failure of the Articles of Confederation and creation of the Constitution in 1787, Americans have been guided by this document placed forth by the Founding Fathers. Within the Constitution, there are a multitude of elements such as the Preamble, the Articles, the Bill of Rights, and the other Amendments even though it is considered to be the shortest constitution of any large and powerful government in the world. While the Constitution creates very specific regulations for the different branches of government, it also creates a sense of interesting ambiguity with the Elastic Clause. Since the clause

As stated earlier, the first reason was to organize government and the second reason was to assist Congress in carrying out all other expressed powers. No matter how hard the Framers tried, they knew that it would be impossible to tackle every miniscule detail needed to organize a government and that new issues would continuously be introduced to the political world that were not addressed in the Constitution. Edmund Randolph, a committee member, had suggested the idea that Congress be the ones to accomplish this task and James Wilson, author of the clause, was the one to propose the clause to overarch that idea (Engdahl 2017). Without the clause, the legislative branch would be overstepping its power and disrespecting the notion of separation of powers any time they chose to expand their governance over a new issue that is not mentioned in the

Through the elastic clause, power is moved away from the states so that the national government can have a more central control over new issues that arise. Pollution regulations, the internet, television, airplane regulation and flight paths are all examples of issues that would be covered under the elastic clause. The Founding Fathers knew they would have absolutely no knowledge over issues such as these, but they realized that they needed some sort of way for Congress and the national government to take control over the issues rather than simply leaving it up for the states to decide individually. Who should control what can be shown on television; Congress or each individual state makes their own television laws? If not for the clause, anything that is not stated in the constitution, such as the examples listed before, would fall under Reserved Powers to the states and the government would not be able to take the necessary steps to accomplish their list of powers. Thus, the elasticity of the clause is ever changing and what is “necessary and proper” now may not hold true in the