Could you imagine a world without a constitution? No rules. Laws. Consequences. The world would be in a much worse place than it is today. Over 200 years ago the founding fathers gathered in Pennsylvania, where the constitutional convention was held in order to amend the articles of confederation. As they intended to amend the plan, they realized that it would be impossible so they secretly began working on an entire new constitution. The United States Constitution. It established the forms of national government and defined the rights and liberties of the American people. The Unites States constitution has seven principles, those which are, Popular Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, limited Government, Republicanism, Federalism, and Individual Rights. Each principle has its own meaning and purpose as to why it was included in the constitution. Limiting the power of the government was one of the main reasons why the founders felt the need for a new constitution. They didn’t trust themselves enough with too much power so they came up with a way to restrain how far they could extend their influences. This was reflected by adding separation of power and checks and balances to the constitution. Separation of powers was power split into three branches; legislative, executive, and judicial. This is …show more content…
where checks and balances comes in. Each branch leveled out each other and none was able to do something without the other agreeing. Individualism was another key point as to why the new constitution was made.
The founders understood that the American people needed to feel free within all these laws so they came up with the unalienable rights. These rights are protected by the bill of rights and are rights that cannot be taken away from us. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is a phrase that all American individuals know. The phrase gives three great examples of the unalienable rights that each American Individual has. Although the constitution also focused on individualism, we really don’t have a say in too much of what happens with big decisions, even while we
vote. Lastly, Democracy. The five major concepts of democracy are very straight-forward. Worth of the individual, which means democracy serves many of the different and distinct individuals. Equality of all person; all people are equal, no matter the race, gender, color, religion, etc. Majority rule with minority rights; the will of the people is determined by popular vote, or better known as majority rule. Necessity of compromise; a process which democracy achieves public agreement rather than just ignoring our ideas. And most importantly, individual freedom; all individuals are given individual freedom as long as it does not interfere or harm others. Democracy basically means that it produces a government which is accountable to the citizens and responsive to the needs and expectations of the government. Although the founders tried to divide everything equally, they did better in some areas than others. I think that even with democracy the government still has a bigger saying than us individuals. I believe there is one main flaw in the constitution, the founders failed to accomplish the main purpose of making a constitution; to establish a free society. Even though the constitution helped with many issues, I believe the people still need to be heard more
To start out with, the constitution divided power so no one branch or person had complete power over the nation or others. In document B it states, ¨Liberty requires that the three departments of power are distinct and separate.¨ This means that in order to prevent and guard against tyranny we must have different and separate branches holding power if there is only one or they are too similar that could create a small group with close to complete power creating a tyranny. Power must be separated into three branches so that they may check and limit each other so that no laws are passed that will harm the nation and are unconstitutional. The three branches are very separate but can
After the American Revolution, America had earned it’s freedom from Britain. In order to govern this new country the Articles of Confederation was created. This document was flawed by the colonists fear of putting too much power into a central government. Knowing the document needed to be fixed a constitutional convention was called. The document created at this convention has been our constitution ever since. But even the Constitution was meet with criticism. One major concern when writing the constitution was how to protect the citizens rights. The Constitution did this through the preamble, the legislative process, the limit of presidential terms, the judicial branch, and the bill of rights.
A constitution is the system of fundamental principles according to which a nation is governed. Our founding fathers created the US Constitution to set specific standards for our country. We must ask ourselves why our founding fathers created the Constitution in the first place. America revolted against the British due to their monarchy form of government. After the American Revolution, each of the original 13 colonies operated under its own rules of government. Most states were against any form of centralized rule from the government. They feared that what happened in England would happen again. They decided to write the Articles of Confederation, which was ratified in 1781. It was not effective and it led to many problems. The central government could not regulate commerce between states, deal with foreign governments or settle disputes. The country was falling apart at its seams. The central government could not provide assistance to the state because there wasn’t a central army. When they realized that the Articles of Confederation was not up to par, they held a convention, known as the Constitutional Convention of 1787. As a result of t...
Our Constitution establishes three branches of government and defines their very existence. The reason for the three branches is to separate the powers. The phrase “separation of powers” isn’t in the constitution, but it best explains the intention of the Constitution. It is essential that the assignment of lawmaking, enforcing and interpreting be spread out among the separated powers to ensure that all power doesn’t fall into the lap of one group, or even a power-hungry individual. The powers of which I’m speaking that were intentionally separated by way of the Constitution are the Legislative Branch, Executive Branch and finally, the Judicial Branch.
According to Thomas Jefferson, all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights. Unalienable rights are rights given to the people by their Creator rather than by government. These rights are inseparable from us and can’t be altered, denied, nullified or taken away by any government, except in extremely rare circumstances in which the government can take action against a particular right as long as it is in favor of the people’s safety. The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America mentions three examples of unalienable rights: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. I believe these rights, since they are acquired by every human being from the day they are conceived, should always be respected, but being realistic, most of the time, the government intervenes and either diminishes or
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The document I chose to write about is the United States Constitution. When the thirteen British colonies in North America declared their independence in 1776, they laid down that “governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The “colonies” had to establish a government, which would be the framework for the United States. The purpose of a written constitution is to define and therefore more specifically limit government powers. After the Articles of Confederation failed to work in the 13 colonies, the U.S. Constitution was created in 1787.
When the Framers of the U.S. Constitution met, they did not intend to write the U.S. Constitution, they met to fix the Articles of Confederation. The Articles was too weak and could not support the nation either domestically or abroad. After the Framers had worked on the Articles for a while, they realized they need a whole new document; and they started over. While the Framers realized the need for a strong federal government, they also intended to protect its citizens from a monarchial government such as the England government. The Framers decided that people needed to be citizens of both the nation and their respective states. However, the Framers did not want any one person or group to have total control over any aspect of the federal government. They felt that if they allowed this to happen, monarchy would prevail and they would be back in the same position they had been before. Therefore, they added the separation of powers and checks and balances as a way to restrain the control of the national government. Separation of powers divided the government into three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. This was accomplished in the first three articles of the Constitution. Checks and balances was the method in which each group could ensure that no branch overstepped its boundaries.
The US Constitution established America's national government and fundamental laws. After gaining independence, America set themselves apart from others in a whole new way. Diverging away from the idea of a monarchical government, Americans created a new form of government based off of republicanism. Working together, they called it the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation is a written document within the Constitution that states the functions of the national government after the United States’ declared independence from Great Britain.
Between 1787 and 1791 the Framers of the US Constitution established a system of government upon principles that had been discussed and partially implemented in many countries over the course of several centuries, but never before in such a pure and complete design, which we call a constitutional republic. Since then, the design has often been imitated, but important principles have often been ignored in those imitations, with the result that their governments fall short of being true republics or truly constitutional. The Framers of the Constitution tried very hard to design a system that would not allow any one person or group within the government to gain too much power. Personally, I think they succeeded. In order to guard against what one of the Founding Fathers called an "excess of democracy," the Constitution was built with many ways to limit the government's power. Among these methods were separating the three branches, splitting the legislature so laws are carefully considered, and requiring members of Congress to meet certain criteria to qualify for office. The Founders did leave a few problems along with their system.
When the Constitution of the United States was first created in 1787, its purpose was to unify our country. However, by 1850, the United States had become 'source of sectional discord and tension and ultimately contributed to the failure of the union it had created.' What happened during the 63 years after it was first established to 'contribute to the failure of the union it had created?' One must look at what the Constitution promoted to make the country unified and what it did to make it disunified. Compromises such as 3/5, the Missouri, and the tariff of 1850 all helped to unify and shape our country. However, compromises such as the Fugitive Slave Law, Popular Sovereignty, and the slave trade all led to disunify our country. The large populous states naturally wanted the number of representatives in the new Congress to be based on population. The Virginia Plan provided that there would be two houses of Congress and that in each one representation would be based on population. Like many other ideas that have made history, it was remarkably simple. Why not divide the Congress into two houses? In one house (the Senate) each state, regardless of population, would have the same number of representatives. In the other house (the House of Representatives) each member would represent the same number of people. 'Quite appropriately this came to be called the Great Compromise. Other major compromises came on slavery and on the control of commerce. The southern states, where the slaves were really treated as property, still wanted the slaves counted as people for the purposes of representation in the New House of Representatives. Some delegates argued that if one kind of property was counted f...
The Constitution is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “the basic written set of principles and precedents of federal government in the US, which came into operation in 1789 and has since has been modified by twenty-seven amendments”. The Constitution was originally drafted in Philadelphia in 1787, a year later it was ratified, and in 1789 was put into working order and referred to as the new government. However some states did not conform as quickly and felt there was a “lack of specific guarantees of personal liberty” (Silberdick Feinberg, 2015). To address these concerns government representatives from state and federal legislature met to develop better transparency on the limitations of federal government and protection
a) There are multiple parts of The Constitution which deal with economic controls, but perhaps the most important one is the section of The Constitution that is section 8 of Article I. In this section “The new constitution institutionalized the means for government involvement in the economy.”(Wood, February 11, 2015). The some of the enumerated powers include the power to coin money, the commerce clause, and the taxing and spending clause. These powers provide the Government with a foundation of power from which to affect the economic relations of the country. The Taxing and Spending Clause provides amble power to Congress to influence economic aspects of life through regulation, probation, and tariffs. These specific powers are perhaps some
Novus Ordoro Seclorum is Latin for “a new order for the ages.” Why did Americans select the constitutional order they did in 1787-1789, and why did they reject a more democratic and confederal form not more than a decade old?
The United States Constitution is one of the oldest documents in U.S. history created by our Founding Fathers to limit the power of the federal government and protect the natural born rights of citizens. These forward thinking individuals realized that sometimes people in positions of authority could potentially abuse their power hence the creation and framework of United States Constitution was established. The Founding Fathers intentions which were deemed fair and consistent would give people the protection they once feared could be taken away. Though these intentions were viewed in the eyes of fairness and consistency the Constitution could be interpreted multiple ways.