Pros And Cons Of The Constitution

The Constitution was created in response to the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation. While almost all would agree the Articles were a failure and needed replacing there was much debate on what should replace them. There were two sides to this debate. On one side stood the Federalists who believed that a strong centralized government was necessary to avoid anarchy. On the other side stood the anti-federalists who were concerned about the government becoming too powerful and infringing on the rights of the people. In the end the constitution was created and within it were several compromises between the large states, a division of authority between the state and federal government, and a system of checks and balances to prevent corruption.

The larger states felt it should be based on population and the smaller states felt it should be an equal representation. The Virginia plan was proposed, and it called for two houses, the lower and upper. The lower house would be represented based on population and the upper house would be appointed by the lower house. This plan faced immediate opposition from the smaller states like New Jersey as they felt they would be underrepresented. Eventually it was decided that the upper house would be elected by state legislatures instead of the lower house. This would ensure that each state was represented in congress by at least one representative. Another point of discussion was how to count, or not count, slaves in representation and for taxing purposes. The Great Compromise was the solution, and this called for each slave to be counted as 3/5 of a person for population representation and for taxation. Additionally, the Great Compromise solved the debate between the large and small states for representation in congress. It concluded that the upper house would be represented equally by each state with 2 representatives per state. This mean there would be two houses one with representation by population and one with equal representation by having 2 per

The Articles placed a majority of the power in the states’ hands. This was what led to such a weak national government and what the framers of the Constitution aimed to fix. A main concern was the sovereignty of the states. How could the states keep their power and independence with a large federal government? This was addressed in the first line the of the constitution in the phrase “We the people…” James Madison argued that the power of both the state and federal government comes from its citizens and because of this there can be sovereignty on both a state and federal level. The Constitution also set out to solve this question by dividing the power between the state and federal government. The Constitution would be the “law of the land” but this would not impede state level powers or laws. Instead the federal government would oversee federal level concerns like taxing and creating an army. There were still many who felt that a large government would lead to a corrupt government with control in the hands of only a few. James Madison addressed this concern by showing that in fact a large government with several parts was necessary to avoid corruption by allowing each part to check the other. This led to one of the Constitution’s greatest features in its separation of