The Constitution: Discussion Questions

October 5, 1998

Versions of these questions were presented in class on Monday, October 6. By addressing specific features of the Constitution, the Constitutional Convention, and the ratification process, they suggest issues that could be raised in answering the two more general questions listed in the syllabus:

Suppose you were a small farmer in Massachusetts in the 1780s. Would you have voted to ratify the Constitution? Why or why not? Was the Constitution the best possible outcome, or could the founders have devised a better system of government?

1. With regard to Beard's criticisms and Brown's rebuttal in Points of View:
1. How reliably is economic position linked with the politics of Constitutional design-does latter follow from former? In other words, is it fair to assume that the upper-class framers of the Constitution designed it to protect their economic interests at the expense of other sectors of society?
2. How democratic or undemocratic was the ratification process. How did/does this affect its legitimacy?
3. Does/did the Constitution afford protection to elite economic interests? If so, how?
2. Were/are the Constitutional constraints on majority rule necessary to protect minorities and to insulate governmental decision-making from momentary passions and uninformed opinions?
3. Was Madison's notion of politics as regulated contention among diverse interests a better choice for the nation than the AntiFederalist emphasis on politics as a search for the common good?
4. Was preservation of the Union worth the compromise that allowed slavery to continue? Was there any third way, or was the choice as stark as it appears?
5. Would an expansion of the powers to the national government under the existing confederation of the states have been a workable alternative to the Constitutional design?
6. How might different social actors--farmers, merchants, women, etc.--have viewed the Constitution at the time of ratification?
7. Would a more numerous House (several hundred representatives each representing 10,000 or fewer citizens) with stronger powers have been preferable to the smaller House (each representative representing 30,000 or more citizens) with lesser powers that the Constitution established? In other words, would a legislature modeled on the republicanism of the AntiFederalists been preferable to the one actually created? To carry this further, would a unicameral (one house) legislature be preferable to the bicameral one chosen?