Founders' Constitution: Why Include These Provisions?

The U.S. Constitution is the oldest and shortest written national constitution, providing the basic rules of the U.S. government and acting as the Supreme Law of the Land. The Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution to establish a fair and balanced government, with checks and balances to prevent tyranny and protect the rights of the people. The Constitution was also designed to address the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, which lacked enforcement powers and threatened to tear the young country apart. The Founding Fathers, influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, believed in fundamental rights, including common law rights and natural rights, which governments were created to protect.

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To establish a fair and balanced government

The Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution sought to establish a fair and balanced government. They had just fought a war to gain independence from Great Britain and its centralised "unitary" government, and they wanted to prevent a similar concentration of power in the hands of a single ruler or group. The Founders were influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, which held that people have certain inherent rights that come from God or their humanity, not from the government.

To achieve this goal, the Founding Fathers divided power into three separate branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. This system of checks and balances was designed to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful and to encourage the branches to work together for the benefit of all the people. The legislative branch, composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate, is responsible for making laws and controlling the budget, preventing the executive from creating policy without financial backing. The President, as the head of the executive branch, can veto legislation, but it can still become law if two-thirds of both houses override the veto. The judiciary can declare laws or executive actions unconstitutional through judicial review, ensuring long-term adherence to constitutional principles.

The Founding Fathers also recognised the need for a balance of power between the state and federal governments. The first attempt at a constitution, the Articles of Confederation, had vested almost all power in individual state legislatures, leading to political chaos and debt. The Founders met again in 1787 and drafted a new Constitution grounded in a novel separation of state and national powers known as federalism. Federalism became a guiding principle to safeguard Americans from tyranny while providing a check against centralised power.

To protect fundamental rights

The founders of the United States Constitution were steeped in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, influenced by philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Francis Hutcheson, and Montesquieu. These Enlightenment thinkers believed that people have certain inherent and unalienable rights that come from God or simply from being human.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are based on the idea that all people have fundamental rights that governments are created to protect. These rights include common law rights, derived from sources like the British Magna Carta, and natural rights, which the Founders believed came from God. The Founders held that natural rights are inherent in all people and that certain rights are unalienable, meaning they cannot be surrendered to any government under any circumstances.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution make up the Bill of Rights, which was added to limit government power and protect individual liberties. James Madison, who wrote the amendments, focused on rights-related changes, ignoring suggestions that would have structurally altered the government. The Bill of Rights established broad principles that guaranteed fundamental rights in general terms, including the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusion, the right to fair treatment by the government, and the freedom of speech and religion.

The inclusion of such provisions in the Constitution was driven by the belief that a bill of rights was necessary to safeguard individual liberty and clearly define the limits of government power. Anti-Federalists, who favoured state and local governments, argued that in a state of nature, people were entirely free, and while some rights were yielded for the common good, certain fundamental rights should always be retained by the people. They believed that a bill of rights would serve as a warning system, enabling citizens to immediately recognize when their rights were threatened.

To avoid tyranny

The founding fathers of the United States had just broken free from the British Empire and its form of centralised government, and they were anxious to avoid any foreign influence on their young democracy. The founders were inspired by the desire to eradicate tyranny and ensure freedom and liberty. They were aware of the failures of tyrannical regimes of the past and were determined to prevent oppressive ideologies from taking hold in the new nation.

The Constitution, with its provisions for limited government and the division of power between federal and state governments, was designed to safeguard against tyranny. This system, known as federalism, became a guiding principle in the Constitution, providing a check against centralised power. The founders had experienced the tyranny of Britain's top-down centralised government under King George III, and they wanted to ensure that power was shared and balanced between the states and the national government.

The 10th Amendment, ratified in 1791, served as a catch-all to ensure that powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states or the people. These "reserved" powers included local and state government authority, policing, education, and the regulation of intrastate trade. Federalism has proven to be a successful experiment in shared governance, providing a model for other nations to follow.

The founding fathers also recognised the importance of individual rights and civil liberties in preventing tyranny. The Constitution guarantees personal freedoms and civil rights, which have been expanded and clarified through Supreme Court cases. The 14th Amendment, in particular, has played a significant role in expanding the rights and opportunities of historically disadvantaged groups.

The founders understood that a well-administered government could be a blessing to the people, but they also recognised the potential for corruption and the descent into despotism. They aimed to create a system of checks and balances that would endure and protect the rights and freedoms of Americans for generations to come.

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To ensure state governments

The founding fathers of the United States included provisions in the Constitution to ensure state governments retained some power and autonomy, while also creating a powerful central government. This was a response to the previous system, the Articles of Confederation, which had vested almost all power in individual state legislatures and practically nothing in the national government, leading to political chaos and crippling debt.

The founders, meeting in Philadelphia in 1787, created a new form of government, known as federalism, which divided power between the states and the federal government. They included the Tenth Amendment, ratified in 1791, which states that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This amendment was intended to safeguard against tyranny while also providing a check against the federal government overreaching its powers.

The specific powers retained by the states include authority and functions of local and state governments, policing, education, the regulation of intrastate commerce and trade, and the running of elections. The Ninth Amendment also ensured that a list of civil liberties that the federal government could not do did not imply that the federal government could do everything else.

The Constitution also includes provisions for the protection of individual rights, such as the Fourteenth Amendment, which prevents states from violating the privileges and immunities of their citizens, depriving anyone of life, liberty, or property without due process, and denying anyone equal protection. This marked a shift towards what has been called "Fundamental Rights Federalism."

Overall, the founders sought to create a unified national government with limited powers, while also maintaining a sphere of autonomy for state governments to exercise their powers, thus ensuring that no part of the government could become too powerful.

To unite the colonies

The Founding Fathers of the United States were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the War of Independence from Great Britain, established the United States of America, and crafted a framework of government for the new nation. The Founding Fathers include those who wrote and signed the United States Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States.

The Articles of Confederation, the United States' first constitution, was adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and was in force from March 1, 1771, until 1789 when the present-day Constitution went into effect. The Articles were a treaty of alliance between thirteen sovereign republics, creating a perpetual union and organising the states into a loose compact in which they mostly governed themselves. The document established a weak central government that mostly, but not entirely, prevented the individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy.

The Articles were born out of necessity to fight the War for Independence and coordinate the war effort. They enabled Congress to create the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Wars, Marine, and Treasury, allowed for the establishment of post offices, and had a provision that would permit Canada to join the Union in the future. Congress’s most significant legislative achievement under the Articles was its passage of a series of land ordinances in the mid-1780s: the Land Ordinance of 1784, the Land Ordinance of 1785, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. These ordinances collectively provided a process for adding new and equal states to the nation, guaranteed republican governments and other rights for the new states and their inhabitants, banned slavery and involuntary servitude in the new territories after 1800, and provided for public education in the new states.

However, the Articles gave the Confederation Congress the power to make rules and request funds from the states, but it had no enforcement powers, couldn’t regulate commerce, or print money. The states’ disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the young country apart. Divisions among the states and even local rebellions such as Shays' Rebellion threatened to destroy the fruits of the Revolution. Nationalists, led by James Madison, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton, almost immediately began working toward strengthening the federal government. They helped convince Congress to organise a Grand Convention of state delegates to work on revising the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787, and on September 17, 1787, 38 delegates signed the Constitution.

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