Constitution Paper Essay Example for Free

Constitution Paper Essay The weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation were pointed out by the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation were tweaked in May 1786. This introduced a set of fresh regulations for the central government. Thedeclaration of Independence was approved by the Congress on July 4, 1776. The Constitution paid attention to the irregularities in the Declaration of Independence and replaced all direct mentions of slavery. The Great Compromise drew an end to the disagreements among the states and set congressional representation upon population on an equal basis. The Bill of Rights was introduced by James Madison to the first United States Congress on August 21 1789 and was used by the House of Representatives. John Dickinson proposed an outline to the Articles of Confederation in 1776. The first establishment of a formal government in the colonies was introduced in this. The Articles of Confederation was accepted by thirteen states on March 1 1781. The document of unification introduced a semblance of control to the central government. The Articles of Confederation helped address a feeble government system and pointed out a number of failures. Nonetheless The Articles of Confederation offered very little success as a government tool. The U.S. Constitution was put in writing in 1787. The new U.S. Constitution attempted to address the unsuccessful failures of the Articles of Confederation. For example, the Congress had no authority to charge taxes on the states. The system relied on donations from the states. The notion of federal taxation was opposed by the states. This caused an overpowering rise in currency because Congress did not have proper funding.Another defect of Congress was that it failed be in command of the foreign commerce. As a result, merchants and consumers had to pay high prices. Though Congress did possess the power to pass regulations and laws they were not allowed The thirteen American colonies of Great Britain revolted and declared independence for good reason. The actions of the British governm ent the king deprived Americans of numerous rights that were guaranteed to all other British citizens. In fact, many of these rights were guaranteed as early as 1215 since the American colonists were British citizens they had good reason to expect those rights to be recognized. They werent and in 1776 the American colonies declared independence and became the United States of America. When Americans wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they made sure to fix the problems.  These are some of the ways they fix the problems The king exercised absolute power. The power of British kings had been limited since 1215 almost 400 years before the first American colony was settled. The US Constitution divides power among three branches of government, and there are checks and balances to make sure that no single branch gets too powerful. Colonials were taxed without their consent. British citizens were represented in Parliament American colonists were not represented in Parliament, even though they were British citizens The US Constitution gives Congress the power to tax US citizens, and US citizens are represented in Congress by representatives they elect. July 16, 1987 began with a light breeze a cloudless sky and a spirit of celebration. On that day two hundred senators and representatives boarded a special train for a journey to Philadelphia to celebrate a sing ular congressional anniversary. Exactly two hundred years earlier the framers of the U.S. Constitution, meeting at Independence Hall, had reached a supremely important agreement. Their so called Great Compromise Connecticut Compromise in honor of its architects Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth provided a dual system of congressional representation. In the House of Representatives each state would be assigned a number of seats in proportion to its population. In the Senate all states would have the same number of seats. Today we take this arrangement for granted in the wilting hot summer of 1787 it was a new idea. In the weeks before July 16 1787 the framers had made several important decisions about the Senates structure. They turned aside a proposal to have the House of Representatives elect senators from lists submitted by the individual state legislatures and agreed that those legislatures should elect their own senators. By July 16 the convention had already set the minimum age for senators at thirty and the term length at six years as opposed to twenty-five for House members with two year terms. James Madison explained that these distinctions based on the nature of the senatorial trust, which requires greater extent of information and stability of character would allow the Senate to proceed with more coolness with more system and with more wisdom than the popular electedbranch The issue of representation however threatened to destroy the seven week old convention. Delegates from the large states believed that because their states contributed proportionally more to the nations financial and defensive  resources they should enjoy proportionally greater representation in the Senate as well as in the House. Small-state delegates demanded, with comparable intensity, that all states be equally represented in both houses. When Sherman proposed the compromise, Benjamin Franklin agreed that each state should have an equal vote in the Senate in all mattersexcept those involving money. Over the Fourth of July holiday delegates worked out a compromise plan that sidetracked Franklins proposal. On July 16 the convention adopted the Great Compromise by a heart stopping margin of one vote. As the 1987 celebrants duly noted without that vote there would likely have been no Constitution. I think the bill of rights would be the perfect discussion what is the bill of rights The original Constitution as proposed in 1787 in Philadelphia and as ratified by the sta tes, contained very few individual rights guarantees as the framers were primarily focused on establishing the machinery for an effective federal government. A proposal by delegate Charles Pinckney to include several rights guarantees including liberty of the press and a ban on quartering soldiers in private homes was submitted to the Committee on Detail on August 20 1787 but the Committee did not adopt any of Pinckney recommendations. The matter came up before the Convention on September 12 1787 and following a brief debate proposals to include a Bill or Rights in the Constitution were rejected. As adopted, the Constitution included only a few specific rights guarantees protection against states impairing the obligation of contracts provisions that prohibit both the federal and state governments from enforcingex post facto lawslaws that allow punishment for an action that was not criminal at the time it was undertaken and provisions barringbills of attainderlegislative determinations of guilt and punishment Art. I Sections 9 and 10. The framers and notably James Madison its principal architect believed that the Constitution protected lib erty primarily through its division of powers that made it difficult for an oppressive majorities to form and capture power to be used against minorities. Delegates also probably feared that a debate over liberty guarantees might prolong or even threaten the fiercely-debated compromises that had been made over the long hot summer of 1787. In the ratification debate Ant Federalists opposed to the Constitution complained that the new system threatened liberties and suggested that if the delegates had truly cared about protecting individual rights they would have included  provisions that accomplished that. With ratification in serious doubt Federalists announced a willingness to take up the matter of series of amendments to be called the Bill of Rights soon after ratification and the First Congress comes into session. The concession wasundoubtedlynecessary to secure the Constitutions hard fought ratification. Thomas Jefferson, who did not attend the Constitutional Convention,in a December 1787 letter to Madisoncalled the omission of a Bill of Rights a major mistake A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth. James Madison was skeptical of the value of a listing of rights, calling it a parchment barrier. Madisons preference at the Convention to safeguard liberties was by giving Congress an unlimited veto over state laws and creating a joint executive judicial council of revision that could veto federal laws. Despite his skepticism, by the fall of 1788 Madison believed that a declaration of rights should be added to the Constitution. Its value, in Madisons view, was in part educational, in part as a vehicle that might be used to rally people against a future oppressive government and finally in an argumentborrowed from Thomas Jefferson Madison argued that a declaration of rights would help install the judiciary as guardian ofindividual rights against the other branches.