Major influences when creating the constitution were the ideas of natural rights, the separation of powers, and the popular sovereignty.
John Locke was a seventeenth century English philosopher and political theorist who believed that all men by nature should be free and have equal opportunities. As he stated in The Second Treatise of Civil Government, “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” (Locke, Chapter II). He believed that the monarchs should be limited and should rule based on the people's needs, as well as respecting their rights. That's when he conceptualized people's rights as unalienable and natural. They rights that people have at birth and can't be taken away, nor can the government infringe on them. Natural rights were created because of the influence of Social
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The theory of the Social Contract achieved prominence when it became one of the leading ways of showing people's relationship with the government and how they can overthrow their monarchs if they became oppressive against them. This is when the political philosophers embrace new ways of viewing the problems of the government and advocated for the separation of powers in the government.
As well as natural rights, Locke’s theory of Social Contract founded the separation of powers of the United States Constitution. This is a division of the government’s power into three branches known as the legislative, executive and nowadays judicial; however, Locke’s third branch was called the “federative power.” They were created because the government required a