Constitution Paper

Constitution Paper

Introduction

The process of the making of the Constitution of the United States involved a consideration of a lot of aspects as well as the strengths and weaknesses of various existing documents and policies. The Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence along with Connecticut Compromise (also known as the Great Compromise) were instrumental in this respect. The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and the complaints of the Declaration of Independence were attempted to be addressed in the Constitution of the United States while the Great Compromise helped in determining the procedure of the representation of states in Congress. The paper also highlights the manner in which these three documents helped in defining the Constitution of the country and in defining the methods of elections for officials in the US House of Representatives, Senate and the Executive branch.

Discussion

Once the Revolutionary War ended the thirteen American colonies needed a governmental setup that was able to replace the prevailing British setup. The process of this search for a plan for the government was a slow and difficult one and required a lot of cooperation and compromise. In this regard, the first attempt of the Founding Fathers was the formation of the Articles of Confederation. The weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation though soon became apparent and threatened the fruits of the Revolution (myloc.gov).

The most significant weakness in the Articles of Confederation stemmed from the manner in which it called for confederacy which implies that each state was independent with the US only responsible for the common defense, security and general welfare. This made the national government very weak. Other weaknesses included a single vote in Congress for every state irrespective of their size, no power to Congress to tax or regulate the foreign and interstate trade. Furthermore, the Article of Confederation did not provide any executive branch that could ensure the enforcement of any acts passed by the Congress nor was there a national court system. Any amendment to the Articles if needed was required to pass with a unanimous vote while the passing of laws required nine out of the 13 states to agree to it (www.earlyamerica.com).

These Articles generated a lot of conflicts among the states while there was not much financial support extended to the national government from the states. The colonies came together to discuss the needs for the reformation of the government, and in the Constitutional Convention, these weaknesses were thus considered before the Constitution of the United States was drafted. Virginia's delegate Randolph suggested a new form of national government that had a national executive and national judiciary. His proposal also included the suggestion to replace one house of the Congress with two namely the upper and lower house with the voters of the state electing members of the lower house. The assemblies would then chose members of the upper house while the no. of representatives was to be determined according to the population of each state. Such a proposal was not acceptable to ...