PS 201 Joseph Boland
Introduction to US Politics Fall, 1998
The Constitution, Lectures 2-3 Notes
- Question
- Was the Constitution intended to be a democratic document that established popular
sovereignty, that is, control of the government by common people? Or was it basically
intended to protect the property and status of an elite against the democratic and
egalitarian aspirations of common people? In the words of the text, was the Constitution
a popular democratic or an elite democratic document?
- The Articles of Confederation (1981-1787)
- Intended to provide a means by which thirteen sovereign states (art. 2) could cooperate.
- Structure and process:
- Each state has one vote (but may send between 2-7 delegates) (art.5)
- Term limits (rotation): "no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more
than three years in any term of six years" (art.5).
- All major decisions require the assent of nine states (art. 9).
- No executive -- the presiding officer was "president" (art. 9).
- Amendments to the Articles require the agreement of all the states (art. 13).
- Forms a perpetual union (art. 13).
- Powers of the United States:
- Negotiates treaties, declare war, and choose ambassadors (art. 7).
- States are prohibited from separately negotiating treaties with foreign countries
or other states (art. 6), and are prohibited from making war unless actually
invaded (art. 6).
- Is the final court of appeal for all disputes between states (art. 9).
- Has the power to appropriate, borrow, and issue money (art. 9).
- Regulates all affairs with Indians outside the states (art. 9).
- Establishes and regulates post offices throughout all the United States (art. 9).
- Appoints military officers (excepting regimental officers of land forces),
administers military forces and directs their operations (art. 9).
- Canada is welcome to join the Union at any time (art. 11).
- All debts incurred by the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War will be
honored (art. 12).
- Inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation
- All major decisions require the assent of nine states (art. 9).
- No executive -- the presiding officer was "president" (art. 9).
- Lacked the power to
- regulate trade
- draft troops
- levy taxes directly
- No power to sanction states that failed to comply with tax or troop levies or other
decisions of the Confederation.
- The Constitution
- The social and political crisis of the 1780s
- Depression and social polarization
- Increased social mobility and the breakdown of traditional forms of social hierarchy.
- The populism of the state governments
- The increasingly organized resistance of the "natural aristocracy" -- the propertied and
educated.
- Breakdown of the idea of a mutuality of interests between the people and their
delegates. Alternative responses:
- Social class theories of politics
- The doctrine of checks-and-balances articulated by James Madison and others
- Elite responses:
- Alterations of republican theory
- Legislative tyranny--absolute power in the hands of a single body--as a threat
to liberty. With the breakdown of mutuality between the people and
legislators, the emergence of the idea of popular, as distinct from legislative,
sovereignty, and the need for methods to protect popular sovereignty
- Separation of powers as the fundamental answer
- All branches of government--executive, legislative, and judicial-- are
equally representative of the people, but with different powers, each limited
by law.
- Governmental tyranny could best be prevented by firmly establishing the
independence of each branch and by so distributing the powers of
government among them as to assure that each would act to prevent the
others from overstepping the constitutional bounds of their power.
- Bicameralism as a specific element of separation of powers--a "double
representation" of the people--as a way to prevent legislative tyranny
"by compelling designing men to control two bodies instead of one"
(Wood 1969, 445).
- Thus the old idea of checks and balances (king, lords, and commoners
all represented in government) is replaced by a new one (three
branches, all deriving their authority from the people)
- The idea of a constitution as a fundamental law adopted by the people through
special conventions
- Lockean influence: the constitution as a social contract by which people
established civil society, surrendering a portion of their natural rights to
establish a government to protect their security and provide for their
common welfare.
- The consequent emergence of judicial review: "all acts of the legislature, it
could now be argued, were still 'liable to examination and scrutiny by the
people, that is, by the Supreme Judiciary, their servants for this purpose'"
(Wood 1969, 456). See Hamilton, The Federalist Number 78, for a concise
defense of judicial review.
- The claim that a "natural aristocracy" based on education, cultivation and (usually)
wealth should rule.
- Federalists (the elite) move towards a variation on the doctrines of virtual
representation and organic community. Members of the natural aristocracy, by
virtue of their wider knowledge of society and superior political education,
best represent the people, and the common interests of particular social groups
is equated with that of its most wealthy members (e.g., a wealthy landowner
best represents the "landed interest" even of poor tenant farmers) (Wood 1969,
496).
- Anti-Federalists move towards recognition of social heterogeneity and the
importance of actual representation of diverse interests.
- Nationalism as the means to weaken the power of state governments.
- The thorny problem of Americans' loyalty to the state governments, the
republican ideal of smallness of scale, and the objections to divided
sovereignty.
- The Constitutional Convention
- Fifty-five men, delegates from 12 of the 13 states (Rhode Island refused to send
delegates), met behind closed doors in Philadelphia from May to September, 1787.
- As Beard points out, four groups were not represented: slaves, indentured
servants, women, and men without property.
- Agreement on the need for a stronger national government, but of what kind? Three
major positions:
- The Virginia Plan for a national government (developed primarily by Madison)
introduced May 17th.
- Broad powers to Congress extending to:
- all cases to which the separate states are incompetent, or in which the harmony
of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual
legislation;
- a national veto over state laws "contravening ... the articles of the union";
- the right "to call forth the force of the Union against any member ... failing to
fulfill its duty".
- Congressional representation determined solely by the number of free inhabitants
- And, the election of senators to be made by the House, based on nominations
from the states.
- An independent executive and judiciary.
- A council of revision consisting of executive and judiciary and having a limited
veto.
- The New Jersey Plan for a stronger confederacy -- Read by Patterson on June 15.
- It "resembled the amendments to the Confederation that had been discussed during
the 1780s, and it thus offered a genuinely confederal alternative to the Virginia
Plan" (63).
- A unicameral Congress with each state having one vote.
- Congress's powers more circumscribed than in the Virginia Plan.
- Hamilton's Plan - Elective Monarchy--presented in a 6 hour address on June 18.
- Hamilton praised the British constitution in highly unrepublican terms, celebrating
the House of Lords as 'a most noble institution' and the monarchy as the very
'model' of 'a good executive,' all to the end of suggesting that the Senate and
executive of a well-constructed republic would both serve on the tenure of 'good
behavior'.
- President and senate elected for life ("good behavior");
- House: popularly elected for three years;
- Senate elects governors;
- President has absolute veto;
- Suffrage: white, male, large property.
- Hamilton "Praised by everyone, but supported by none." Why?
- The New Jersey Plan decidedly unacceptable. Why?
- The final outcome-three dimensions:
- The Madisonian solution to the problem of majority tyranny
- the large republic - a diversity of interests canceling each other out
- staggered elections - a majority must sustain itself across at least two election
cycles to prevail
- plus complicated mix of indirect statewide election (to Senate); district
election (to House) and national election (of President)
- separation of powers - unless a majority faction can succeed in controlling all
three branches, its will may not prevail.
- The preservation of an equal vote for each state in the Senate
- Slavery and the three-fifths clause.
- The Ratification Debate and the Bill of Rights
- Key state conventions had an initial Antifederalist majority-Massachusetts, New York,
and Virginia. To win more support for the Constitution, Federalists promise to
consider amendments-but only after adoption. Narrow passage secured (MA: 187-168, NY: 30-27; VA: 89-79).
- Antifederalists wanted more: cut power of the federal government, curb power of
presidency, and increase number of representatives in the House.
- During the first Congress-1789-Madison sheparded 12 amendments through both
houses. Two failed (one of which would have increased the size of the House). The
remaining ten are the Bill of Rights (1791).