athens rome

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Athens:
 Democracy-rule by the people
 Power in Council
 Leading the Council was oligarchy (small group of rulers who controlled the judicial, military, civil and religious functions of government)
 Oligarchy became powerful and passed laws for its benefit
 Farmers and merchants revolted
 Nobles saw the danger in the future, so they distributed land of the wealthy to the poor and it gave Assembly power to pass laws and elect gov’t officials
 Direct democracy developed-more people had a say in gov’t
 Beliefs: Majority rule (law making process and jury trials), all citizens equal
 Women, slaves and foreigners were not citizens- unable to be in gov’t, poor could not afford education and there were lotteries rather than elections.

Rome:
 Republic-representative democracy, one citizen represents a number of others
 Social structure: patricians (upper, landowners) and plebians (lower, farmers)
 Each had lawmaking body, but only patrician Senate could pass laws
 Plebians wanted greater role in gov’t-they were allowed to hold gov’t posts
 Beliefs: lawmaking bodies on state and local levels, all free men have equal rights, innocent until proven guilty, certain rights can never be taken away
 Contributions: system of laws- patrician judges made unfair decisions, therefore, laws were written down to handle similar cases similarly

English Traditions:
 “cultural baggage”-brought traditions of England to America
 Common Law-judicial decisions standardized-judges look back on past similar cases
 Precedents-previous decisions and local customs of people-same decisions applied for all- this is today’s basic legal procedure-cite past cases to prove theirs
 Magna Carta (1215)-king not above law, trial by jury (peers), speedy trial, protections from unjust punishment
 Parliament-English lawmaking and rep. Body. Parliament grew in power because monarchs need money-this idea was that of limiting power within gov’t through three branches
 Bill of Rights (1689)-monarch must have consent of people, through their rep. in parliament , in order to tax and change laws

European Philosophers:
 John Locke-natural rights (peop...

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... on Americas side-showed the connection between England and America was only the tyrannical king, did not talk about parliament

Confederation:
 Unitary system: strong centralized gov’t-only they can make laws
 Governors and judges-limited to terms and limited veto power
 Confederation-loos association of independent states bound for particular purpose
 AC-bounded 13 colonies for common purpose-defense and welfare
 Congress-coin money, borrow money, treaties, make war and peace
 Postives of AC-gov’t waged successful war and peace-US got NW Territory. Land Ordinance of 1785- divided land into townships and each further divided and auctioned off for $1 an acre-proceeds went to public schools
 Negative-Congress- no power to tax of regulate trade-therefore, gov’t could not pay off debts from AR.- states placed tariffs on good imported from other states hoping to protect sale of own products-resulted in trade wars in ill feelings
 Shay’s Rebellion-farmers rebelling (2,000) against state gov’t because governor was insensitive-this event ran doubts in others- is America one nation or thirteen?

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