It’s our last time meeting here, in the recesses of my paper’s opinion section, for this semester’s last installment of “Public Disclosure.” In the time I’ve had the privilege of writing it, the political order both here and abroad has profoundly changed: With our own eyes, we’ve seen how students at USC alone have changed the way they’ve interacted with politics, protesting and self-educating on the threats the world faces in ways we never fully have before.

It prompted a lot of self-reflection about what the duty of a journalist should be during these times — and what my own might be as I enter my career. I’ve always been a “knowledge is power” kind of elitist prick; in an age when misinformation runs rampant through our social media platforms and when most of it goes unchecked, the only thing that can stop lies — and through them, bias and hatred — is genuinely knowing the difference between what is real and fake. Fair and unjust. Nuanced or just plain stupid.

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That’s why I made this column: If the power of the lie can only be stopped by what’s in our minds, then what I’m going to do is shoehorn both knowledge and fake ID jokes into your brain in equal measure. The buck stops with us.

On top of it, I think making people smile and laugh as we educate them on those things doesn’t hurt when we’re asking for their attention on a topic as riveting as the law. Unless a legal lecture comes with a stripper and a box of chocolates each time, I don’t really blame people who get bored of our political process, especially when we see the quality of the punditry that actually makes it to TV news programs. Up on those major networks, I don’t exactly see content worthy of the electorate it’s supposed to serve and inform.

I thought, in that light, that for our last-for-now edition of this column, I’d talk about a couple less-discussed parts of the Constitution — a part of the President’s actual job description, as well as an interesting and not-very-publicized amendment. I hope that one day, everyone who reads this finds it the most redundant information they’ve ever read.

Treaty-making

“He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

Just like almost every part of our Constitution, the treaty-making power is, by and large, a compromise between the early constitutional delegates who wanted Senators to exclusively take charge and those who wanted it to lie firmly in the hands of the Executive. However, short as this clause might be, by far the most discretion in the treaty-making process is left up to the President. If he wanted to regulate tea time in a treaty with Britain, he and his staff could technically write up every single line, down to the heinous sin of double-dipping in the butter dish, before a Senator is even brought in for the “Advice” or the “Consent” part.

Funny enough, our historical record tells us that the decision on treaty-making power had to do with the notion of trust.

“Ultimately, the delegates decided that the Executive Branch was best equipped to act with the confidentiality and efficiency necessary for treaty negotiations,” reads a context article from Constitution Annotated. “In the Federalist No. 64, John Jay expanded on this rationale, arguing that individuals with useful information in treaty negotiations would ‘rely on the secrecy of the President, but … would not confide in that of the Senate, and still less in that of a large popular Assembly.’”

While “secrecy” and “the President” have gotten us in some truly fantastic predicaments with each passing decade, this ability to negotiate and advocate for the American people on the world stage is where the executive has a practically unlimited power — yet there aren’t that many votes to be won in a campaign by talking about negotiation in foreign affairs or the ability to communicate effectively. The presidential bully pulpit quite literally has the power to tank the stock market, crush political candidacies or start wars, depending on his words — yet we never bring that up enough.

Think about it for 2024: Whether in the primary or general election, who would you actually trust (or despise less) to sit at the table when it comes to agreements on things like commerce, weapons usage or environmental protections, to name a few?

The 10th amendment 

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

While a different part of the Constitution, known as the “Supremacy Clause,” declares that federal law is superior to state law, this amendment fills in the gaps for what isn’t explicitly allowed to be legislated by the federal government. While it may seem figurative in limiting Congressional overreaching and actually placing more legal power to state legislatures, Supreme Court decisions have gone back and forth about its true meaning and effect, debating over and over again whether the government’s “implied powers” (that exist but aren’t explicitly stated in the Constitution) come into conflict with this 10th amendment.

I mention this because, as you’ve seen play out in the national abortion rights debate, this country has had quite a bit of difficulty navigating states’ rights versus federal rights — it’s already taken center stage in primary debate arias, statewide referendums like Ohio’s (where abortion has been enshrined as a statewide right) and discussions on electoral strategy for anti-abortion candidates by the major political parties.

I think we can take comfort in the fact that this push-and-pull between when we’re 50 states versus one country has outlived us for generations, but we can’t let it get the better of us. Above all, debates on such hotly contested issues like abortion alone highlight just how important knowing the names, priorities and actions of our state legislators are — they hold arguably more influence on our most personal issues.

CJ Haddad is a junior writing about local, state and federal laws we use in our daily lives. She is also an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Public Disclosure,” runs every other Thursday.