When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it was an immense improvement on the existing doctrine of law, The Articles of Confederation. \u00a0Under the Articles, the states were held together in a loose confederation through common interests. \u00a0The states held almost all power while the national government’s power existed only to make war or peace or to pursue opportunities for the better of all the states. \u00a0Without power, the central government was not able to fund its activities and could not properly protect the people. \u00a0As a result the Constitution was created, a doctrine that redefined both the government of America, and many government’s of the world.<\/p>\n
Why was this new doctrine better for America than that of the articles of \u00a0Confederation? \u00a0The Constitution centralized power while also leaving the states rights to make their own decisions on many issues and to keep their identity. \u00a0It also implemented many new elements to the national government such as the House of representatives and the Senate, the President, and a Supreme Court. \u00a0All of these branches were given checks and balances on one another meaning one could not operate without consent of another. \u00a0This was set up in this way in order to quell the fear of those who believed that centralizing government was tyrannical.<\/p>\n
Despite it’s major advancements from the Articles of Confederation, The Constitution was nowhere near flawless. \u00a0In fact many things we value the most in America, were contradicted or omitted by the original constitution. \u00a0When the Constitution was first prepared there was no written protection of individual liberty, a luxury that Americans take for granted nowadays. \u00a0In addition there was no protection for minorities or women. \u00a0Blacks, who were mostly slaves at this point, would not be part of the freedom that this document strove for. \u00a0Instead, they were mentioned in the Constitution only to protect the practice of slavery. \u00a0The constitution stated that 1) slaves would count as 3\/5s of a person in population counts, 2) there could be no enactments against slave trade till 1808, and 3) non-slave states were required to return runaway slaves to owners. \u00a0For women and minorities it was made clear that they did not have the right to vote and did not share liberties with white males. \u00a0Even those who could vote did not hold as much political power as the common voter does today. \u00a0The Constitution was set up in part to keep politics with those who were the most educated. \u00a0As a result, the original electoral college was actually a group of men elected by state legislature who single-handily voted for the president.<\/p>\n
How, with these flaws, has the constitution continued to survive and be the framework of our government today? This is in large part due to the Elastic Clause.\u00a0<\/strong>With the ability given by the Elastic Clause to amend the constitution, America has been able to continue to develop an ever changing set of laws and social contracts, based on new ideas, new ways of solving problems and a growing diverse society based on the ideal of freedom for all. \u00a0Starting with the first 10 Amendments, which laid out the undeniable rights and liberties of all Americans, Amendments to the constitution have made humongous strides to creating a better government. \u00a0Without the possibility to revisit issues in the Constitution and change if a better or more just option is possible and wanted by the people, our country would not be as progressive as it is today. \u00a0The Elastic Clause is one of the factors that had allowed for a government as complicated as ours, to function and grow. \u00a0For this reason I believe that our democracy does work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it was an immense improvement on the existing doctrine of law, The Articles of Confederation. \u00a0Under the Articles, the states were held together in a loose confederation through common interests. \u00a0The states held almost all power while the national government’s power existed only …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3488,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40541,59091,40531],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9am-section","category-fall-2017","category-the-origins-of-our-democracy","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3488"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}