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The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Shouldn't there be the definite article ("the") before the first word "Congress"? Or is there a reason to omit it?

anon
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"Congress" is a proper noun so it doesn't need an article. To put it another way: Why would you want to specifically mention something when it's already been specifically mentioned?

Anyway the logic regarding articles can get pretty tricky: enter image description here

Grift
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    This is not as simple an issue as you make it out to be. If you look at the U.S. Constitution, you can see many uses of "Congress" with or without "the": https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript Just so you know, it has more instances of "the Congress" than "Congress" without an article. – JK2 Dec 28 '21 at 03:15