About
the Author
Introduction to
The Constitution of
The United States
A Computer Database
& Handbook
(c)
1992 & 1994 D.D.
The
Constitution of the United States is the Supreme Law of the Land, the
Blueprint for the American Form of Government, the Guarantee of Civil
Rights for the American People, and America's Historically Most Important
Export. The U.S. Constitution is ultimately concerned with the
distribution of power.
Between 1781
and 1789, the thirteen newly independent United States of America were
governed by the Articles of Confederation.
Distrusting a
strong central authority -- after their tragic experiences as subjects to
the British Crown -- each state was fiercely independent, indeed
sovereign unto itself.
The governing
body of the allegedly United States under the Articles of Confederation
was simply the Congress of the Confederation, deciding issues on the basis
of one vote per state (akin to the modern U.S. Senate):
There was no body akin to the modern House of Representatives,
legislating with more regard to the concerns of the more populous states;
no executive authority, to enforce the laws; and no federal judicial
system, to settle interstate and international disputes.
The Congress
of the Confederation did, at least in theory, have the power to declare
war, conduct foreign affairs and relations with the Native Americans,
establish the U.S. Army and Navy, and issue and borrow money.
However, many states had their own, worthless currencies; and the
Congress had no power to raise the taxes needed to pay off the massive
Revolutionary war debt, of over $100 million, let alone to establish
sufficient credit to borrow what was required to rebuild the young
war-torn nation.
In contrast,
the states exercised powers of levying taxes and regulating trade that
were unfettered by almost anything but their own self interest -- therein
laid the perhaps most dire problem. Not
only did standards of money and weights-and-measures vary from state to
state, but interstate trade was ruthlessly taxed in accordance with
interstate rivalries and a lack of extradition encouraged profiteers to
escape justice by merely crossing state lines. What's more, the invaluable
trade with Britain was being strangled by the bitter Mother Country. In
1786, Shays' Rebellion, by disgruntled Massachusetts farmers vs. their
ineffectual state government, sent shock waves throughout the troubled
young nation.
The popular
Revolutionary War hero George Washington and his previous aide-de-camp
Alexander Hamilton, an administrative genius, spoke publicly about the
shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation and the need for a strong,
constitutionally empowered and limited national government.
Although
amendments to the Articles of Confederation required unanimous approval,
in 1786 the "Annapolis Convention" of five states called for a
convention to reform the articles; and on May 25, 1787, what was supposed
to be a convention to rewrite the Articles of Confederation -- but would
quickly turn into a convention to write an entirely new and more profound
constitution of national government -- convened in the Pennsylvania State
House (today called "Independence Hall", where the Declaration
of Independence had been forged), in Philadelphia.
55 delegates represented all the states, except Rhode Island --
which refused to recognize a national authority over its internal affairs.
The President of the Constitutional Convention was George Washington. Although all the delegates were accomplished statesmen, who
contributed to the final outcome, the great debate was championed by James
Madison, of Virginia, the "Father of the Constitution", who
spoke, wrote, and cajoled throughout the proceedings that "would
decide forever the fate of republican [that is, representative]
government."
The creation
of the Constitution of the United States drew upon the wisdom of the Ages,
from concepts of human rights, established in Western Civilization by the
ancient Jewish prophets and Jesus Christ; traditions of democratic
institutions, from ancient Greece and Rome; and demands for civil rights
as propounded in the English Magna Carta, of A.D. 1215, to the liberal
charters and constitutions of the American colonies and states and the
political philosophies of the Age of Reason, in which the Founders lived
and learned.
In 1776,
Thomas Jefferson had expounded in the Declaration of Independence the
themes that had motivated Americans to risk their all in the Revolutionary
War against the most powerful empire on Earth:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed..."
Jefferson
himself had called upon the best and brightest ideas from the Age of
Reason. John Locke, the
English author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690),
had written: "The great
and chief end...of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting
themselves under government, is the preservation of their...["life,
liberty, and estate"]" "The
natural [my emphasis] liberty of man is to be free from any
superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative
authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.
The liberty of man in society [my emphasis] is to be under
no legislative power but that established by consent in the
commonwealth..." "Political power...I take to be a right of
making laws with penalties...for the regulating and preserving of
property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of
such laws, and in defense of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all
this only for the public good." "The greatest question which, in
all ages, has disturbed mankind, and...ruined cities, depopulated
countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether
there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have
it."
The creators
of the Constitution of the United States recognized this need to allocate
power wisely. Like others in
the Western World, they were deeply influenced by the Baron de Montesquieu,
the French author of The Spirit of the Laws (1748), who had
written: "Law in general
is human reason..." "...there is no liberty if the judiciary be
not separated from the legislative and executive...There would be an end
to everything, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles
or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws,
that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of
individuals." Thus was
established the foundation for a constitutional system of "checks and
balances" between powerful, yet independent branches of government.
Not trusting
in any one person or small group of people (especially those unanswerable
to the rest of the people) to behave with the perfect wisdom and goodness
of the Almighty, the Constitution divided the powers of government, not
only for efficiency but also for our mutual protection:
The "federal" system established by the Constitution
divides power between the national government and the state governments;
and the federal (national) government distributes balancing powers amongst
the "legislative" branch (the Congress, which makes the laws),
the "executive" branch (headed by the President, which enforces
the laws), and the judicial branch (federal courts up to and including the
Supreme Court, which judge cases and even the laws themselves, based on
the Constitution and its amendments, as the Supreme Law of the Land).
The powers
authorized by the Constitution can be considered on the basis of how they
are distributed. "Expressed" (or "delegated") powers
are explicitly listed in the Constitution, "implied" powers stem
from them, "reserved" powers are unlisted and thus (at least by
virtue of Amendments 9 and 10) belong to the states or the people, and
"concurrent" powers are exercised by both the federal and state
governments (although the federal authority is constitutionally superior,
by Article VI).
Just as
interstate rivalries had crippled the interstate alliance under the
Articles of Confederation, the passionate concerns of individual states
and groups of states challenged their union under a constitution.
Compromise was the saving grace: Large
states and small states compromised on a "bi-cameral"
legislature (See the notes for Article I, Section 1), Northern states and
Southern states compromised on the thorny issue of slavery (as in Article
I, Section 2), and every state compromised on its rights vis-a-vis the
federal government (especially in the "Supremacy Clause", in
Article VI).
39 of the 55
delegates eventually signed the final document, on September 17, 1787.
However, in many respects, the great debate had just begun.
The signed
Constitution was forwarded to constitutional conventions in each state -- the "ratification" (approval) of nine states was required for
implementation of the Constitution. Delaware
was the first to ratify, on December 7, 1787; and New Hampshire was the
ninth, on June 21, 1788: Although
this officially activated the Constitution, it was not until the large and
powerful states of Virginia, on June 25, 1788, and New York, on July 26,
1788, ratified the Constitution that the union was truly secured; but the
road to agreement had been rocky indeed.
The
"Federalists", who supported the Constitution, had been
vigorously opposed by the "Anti-Federalists", including some of
the delegates to the national convention (An unintended consequence was
the two-party political system that has survived, in various forms under
various names, throughout American history).
The Anti-Federalists had attacked the Constitution for having no
bill of rights (See the discussion, below, of the
historical context of the first ten amendments to the Constitution), for
making the Senate too much like the aristocratic British "House of
Lords" (Amendment 17 would eventually provide for the popular
election of senators), for giving the Congress too much latitude in
legislation (as with the "elastic clause", of Article I, Section
8), for giving one man -- the President -- too much power (Benjamin
Franklin, in particular, had argued for an Executive Council but
eventually dropped his opposition in the national convention, which
prompted others to drop their objections, on other grounds), and for
generally granting so much more power to the national government than had
been allowed under the Articles of Confederation.
Ultimately, the Federalists won the national debate -- carried out
state-by-state -- especially with such arguments as those published
anonymously (by Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay) in the Federalist
Papers (later published in book form as The Federalist).
In the Federalist
Papers, Alexander Hamilton argued for a strong central authority:
"Why was government instituted at all?
Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of
reason and justice without restraint."
However, Hamilton tempered such arguments by pointing to the power
to amend the Constitution as needed: The "fundamental principle of a
republican [representative] government...admits the right of the people to
alter or abolish the established constitution whenever they find it
inconsistent with their happiness."
Starting
on a very pragmatic level, James Madison argued:
"The most common and durable source of faction has been the
various and unequal distribution of property."
"The regulation of these various and interfering interests
forms the principle task of modern legislation..." "The appointment of taxes on the various descriptions of
property is an act which seems to require the most exact
impartiality..." "Justice
is the [desired] end of government."
Although his support for the Constitution demonstrated faith in the
ability of the democratic-republic to be created to live up to this
awesome responsibility, Madison also uttered this ominous prophecy:
"We are free today substantially, but the day will come when
our Republic will be an impossibility.
It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in
the hands of a few. A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the
day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few,
then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to
readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions."
(For example, see Amendment 16, establishing a progressive federal
income tax) In short, even the "Father of the Constitution"
acknowledged the need for the
Supreme Law of the Land to continue to be a living document, not just some
dusty relic of a time long past.
What
then is the legacy of the Constitution of the United States, besides
governing us still, two centuries later?
Well, the sometimes very specific, sometimes intentionally
ambiguous, typically timeless wisdom embodied in the Constitution of the
United States has made it America's most important export to the world:
Its influences can be seen -- in the forms of government and
sometimes in the actual wording -- within national constitutions drawn-up
especially in the 19th Century throughout Western Europe and Latin
America.
The rule of law in our democratic-republic -- not the
all-too-often tyrannical whim of a hereditary monarch -- that is
the Constitution of the United States has much more often than not fairly
distributed powers and, thus, protected individual rights and enforced
collective responsibilities for millions of people for hundreds of years.
Carefully selected amendments, "necessary and proper"
laws, Supreme Court decisions, creative legislators and Chief Executives,
and -- underpinning it all -- the devotion of the American people to the
grandest experiment in democracy that the world has ever undertaken have
all contributed to making the Constitution of the United States surely the
most important secular document ever created in human history.
Good reading!
Historical
Context of
The
Bill of Rights
As indicated
in the "Historical Context" for the Constitution as a whole
(above), Anti-Federalists insisted that a Bill of Rights be attached to
the Constitution of the United States, as had been attached to the
constitutions of various individual states:
The bitter experiences of abuses of civil rights under the British
colonial authorities convinced most Americans that human rights had to be
specifically protected.
With
impassioned prodding from George Mason and Patrick ("Give Me Liberty
or Give Me Death") Henry of Virginia as well as others in all the
states, James Madison and others in the first Congress of the United
States operating under the new Constitution did in September of 1789
propose such amendments, in accordance with the procedures set forth in
Article V (Actually, twelve amendments were proposed; and one of the two
that did not become included in the Bill of Rights, an amendment limiting
congressional pay raises, was not forgotten -- it would eventually be
ratified, as the 27th Amendment, over two centuries later!).
On December
15, 1791, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified,
guaranteeing specific liberties and, by virtue of Amendments 9 and 10,
guaranteeing others not even listed (Although actually limiting only the
actions of the federal government, the protections for individual rights
embodied in the Bill of Rights would for the most part be applied to the
states by the "Equal Protection" clause of Amendment 14):
American citizens had won their Bill of Rights.
Let them be disparaged only by tyrants and their fools.
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