Introduction
The US Constitution, the oldest active codified constitution in the world, is the greatest achievement that the American founding fathers attained following the Civil War, and for which they have been romanticized over the last three centuries. Given that the virtues of liberty, egalitarianism, and democracy are the central mythos of the Constitution, history has always associated these ideals with the founding fathers (Dahl, 2003). One of the major factors that motivated the founding fathers to embark on a set of written laws to guide the future nation was the failure of the Crown to address their concerns and the dictatorship associated with the monarchy.
Nevertheless, the founding fathers had individual and ideological differences, with one group advocating for a strong centralized government. At the same time, the other side supported the idea of strong states and a less centralized national government (Kleidosty & Xidias, 2017). The tension between the two sides portrayed the fears and aims of the Constitutional system, given that there was no other government with a similar approach during the time. Despite these fears and tensions, the founding fathers wanted to design a new document outlining democracy, liberty, and egalitarianism (Dahl, 2003). The intended purpose of the Constitution is indicated in the Preamble as to create a perfect union, achieve tranquility, establish justice, promote the general welfare, secure liberty, and provide for the common defense. Therefore, it is arguable that the founders wanted to design a document that would clearly state the roles, responsibilities, powers, and limitations of the federal government and its three branches and the states, along with the freedoms given to the people.
The Design and Purpose of the Constitution as the Founding Fathers Wanted
The new nation’s major issue was setting laws for proper governance. Presided over by President by President George Washington, 55 delegates from the 13 original states, except Rhode Island, discussed the conceivable resolutions to governing challenges they were experiencing under The Articles of Confederation (Kleidosty & Xidias, 2017). The initial central government was deficient in the powers it required for fundamental functions, including regulating money, interstate commerce, and raising taxes.
The delegates understood that for the new government to achieve outright legitimacy and succeed, it was necessary to honor the states’ prevailing powers and independence and win the people’s consent. American founding fathers, intellectual orientation indicated that they sought to use the Enlightenment ideas of science and logic (Foley, 2017). Through science, reason prevailed, allowing the founding fathers to use experiment, observation, and experience as the foundation of their thinking. Consequently, one of the driving factors and purpose of the new constitution was to allow the freedom of thinking to prevail without the interference of religious beliefs and powers bestowed on individuals.
In their deliberations during the convention in Philadelphia, the framers of the Constitution took charge of the responsibility of the design and the purpose of the new document. They endeavored to exercise rationality as they would in their design of the system of government. Particularly the purpose and design of the United States government are expressed in the constitution’s preamble. The Preamble states, “We, the people…offer for the common defense, institute justices, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the overall welfare and secure liberty…” (Ginsberg et al., 2017). Therefore, the long sentence outlines the framers’ intentions to create a nation based on justice, freedom, peace, and the people’s will. The phrase provides evidence that the document was designed to serve the common will of the people rather than the desires of individuals and leaders, which directly contradicts the situation in many European nations at the time.
As the deliberations continued, the critical issue of the main purpose of the new document emerged- the separation of powers. Learning from the examples in Europe, where regimes and monarchies justified their dictatorial rule with the scriptures, the delegates were determined to design a new set of laws that would evade similar failures. They wanted to ensure that no individual would have absolute powers over all aspects of the government (Foley, 2017). The idea was to separate the government into three key branches- the executive, legislature, and judiciary.
As the deliberations continued, the framers came out with a three-level government design, establishing a system of checks and balances to ensure the fair distribution of powers and responsibilities between the three branches. Each branch exercises a certain form of influence and control over the others. For instance, the judiciary has justices of the Supreme Court chosen by the president, who is on the executive arm. This appointment is subject to approval by the legislative arm: the senate (Kleidosty & Xidias, 2017). Similarly, this interplay continues, with the judiciary having powers to depose unconstitutional laws that Congress might pass with the president’s consent. In essence, the design ensures that each branch checks over the others to prevent crises and the assumption of absolute power by a group or an individual.
In this design, the government can only exercise the powers that the Constitution precisely grants it. However, the founding fathers did not achieve a perfect document. As a result, several amendments were made years later, each focusing on improving the document’s design and expanding the people’s rights and liberty. As the current document is designed, it plays an important role in protecting the powers and rights of the people. The initial ten constitutional amendments are called the Bill of Rights (Bernstein, 2022). They guarantee each American vital liberties such as freedom of religion, speech, the right to trial by jury, and the right to be free from arbitrary searches. Consequently, the Constitution’s purpose is to serve the free will of the citizens rather than individual leaders.
Being the supreme law of the land, the Constitution also limits the executive and legislative powers of all government levels. Any law or part of it that the court deems conflicting with the Constitution is invalidated, and the Supreme Court makes the final ruling (Sajó & Uitz, 2017). The constitutions also bestow to the government to ensure that it conforms to times and the changes that transpire socially, economically, and politically (Beard, 2012). The government, through the legislature, amends the constitution. Such alterations are adopted when two-thirds of the Senate and house propose them and three-fourths of states ratify them. This is highly protected by being made difficult such that since the constitution’s ratification, only 32 amendments have been made, with only 16 being adopted since 1800. Therefore, the document’s purpose is to provide equal representation of the people and their interests in the national leadership.
Another purpose that the Constitution plays, based on the initial intentions of the founding fathers, is to ensure a cordial relationship between the states and the federal republic. In understanding the purpose and design of the US government, understanding the interplay between the diverse governments is key. The power and structure of the federal government are contained in the Constitution. It also has general provisions concerning state government. Every state has its constitution, which comprises provisions for local governments inside states. In this design, local government entails counties, cities, school districts, towns, and special purpose districts, which oversee matters such as transportation networks and natural resources.
The federal government is such that its responsibilities and power are limited to those particularly conferred by the country’s constitution. Some of these powers include offering national defense, regulating state commerce, naturalization, immigration regulation, entering treaties with foreign countries, and creating money (Bailyn, 2017). Nonetheless, with time, interpretations and amendments to the constitutions have been made to suit the varying circumstances, and the federal government’s powers have also changed (Hannah-Jones, 2019). Working with the state, the federal government makes specific programs and laws administered by states though federally funded. Exampled areas where states use federal funds to offer services include homeland security, emergency response, assisted housing, social welfare, and emergency response.
The services are delivered under federal guidelines, which confers to the federal government the authority to influence the states. For instance, in the 70s, the federal government tried lowering highway speed limits to lessen energy consumption (Foley, 2017). Instead of just legislating a law to lower the speed limit, the federal government threatened to withhold road project funds from states that did not lower their speed limit. Also, in most cases, for a state program to qualify for federal funding, the state is obligated to fund its program partially. The characteristics of state government are found in the constitution of a state. Just as with the case with the state government enacted policies that should not conflict with federal law (Maggs, 2017). Local governments are also subject to the state statutes and constitutional legal environment.
The Fears and Aims of The Constitutional System and Solution Mechanisms
Most of the time, the early history of the United States is illustrated as a perfect forward march with the country smoothly marching from a collection of independent colonies that was divided into a more unified one. Nonetheless, a look at the country’s history indicates that in the years that ensured the declaration of independence, most political leaders weren’t sure how they would manage the newly formed country (Foley, 2017). They openly questioned the collapse of the confederation into chaos. Among the challenges faced by the newly formed constitutional state was how to exercise control of the new negation, which though large, had a small population, how to rebuild commerce, and apply the republics’ huge domestic and foreign debt.
Tangled with these challenges was the philosophical question of when the United States Constitution should be provided under the Articles of Confederation. These articles set out the rules with which the thirteen separate states described as a friendship league would operate. The Confederation Articles were ratified on March 1, 1781 (Kleidosty & Xidias, 2017). However, the ratification proved to be less efficient as a managing document. Multiple leaders, including the Continental Congress members who had designed the articles, resolved to regroup and explore again to develop a national charter that would organize the country into a more unified and stronger one. Therefore, most delegates feared that failure to form a strong document would weaken or disintegrate the Union. Rather than leaving Philadelphia, the delegates used dialogue as a resolution mechanism to address this fear.
The constitution’s ratification was occasioned by various factors, including the 1780s’ desperate quest for economic stability. Nonetheless, the political principles that led to the adoption of the Constitution were difficult to ingrain into the population. Particularly the conflict was hugely ideological, the actual debate fundamental to the aggressive party contention on the meaning of republican. As the republicanism concept was visibly subject to various readings while persons as varied as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, John Taylor, and John Adams could each claim loyalty to it. Scholars such as Howe illustrate the importance of republican thought’s importance in the 1790s (Kleidosty & Xidias, 2017). Howe shows that the revolutionary generation was deeply inflexible and fascinated with republicanism ideology. It was an American generation that, maybe more than any other, saw their surrounding world through the republicanism political ideology and found meaning in this ideology.
During an era where everybody believed in the republicanism ideology, though they did not agree on what the true meaning of this ideology was. And when the whole country’s fate seemed to hang on the balance of an appropriate definition, most people were distrustful of the federalist agenda. They believed that its basis of operation was founded on a monarchial ideology as opposed to a republican one. It is also imperative to understand that political and intellectual thought was linked intimately to the 18th century’s day-to-day life. The social sphere of the Americans was not yet detached from the religious and political debate. Thus, any conflict was the conflict of the worldview of individuals and had material repercussions.
In governance, the implementation of a policy is crucial. The absolute stances taken by both sides in the debate led to a feeling of impending failure. In the 1790s, there was a sense of ominous crises, of living in a turning point, a time of continuing emergency which was characterized by making fateful decisions with enemies poised to perform ultimate evil. The ruthless and open hostility between the republican party, with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson as the leaders, and the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, can be understood as two groups (Foley, 2017). They are struggling to control the apparatus of the ideological state of the newly re-made country (Foley, 2017). Scholars assert that while repressive state apparatuses offer a shield through which the ideological state apparatus operates, they become the center of power (Alsina & MartĂ, 2018). When ideological state apparatus is preserved in a person’s mind, it may not be the only state, but it is also a site of class struggle, which is often bitter.
In a relatively young nation of loosely tied states, it was progressively clear that Americans could not achieve the classic republican deal. One in which the republic was believed to be a peacefully united, morally upright business environment would have less government bureaucracy. The loss of faith in Adam in exceptionalism in the US was not an anomaly by any means, and his fears reflect the thoughts of most of the renowned revolutionary leaders of America (Dean, 2018). Particularly, a year before the convention, George Washington wrote that they probably had an opinion that they were too good like humans when forming the confederation.
The necessary step and what the federalists needed was to convince people that the government instituted by the Constitution would be less effective. In Federalist Paper no 51, Madison avowed that the new constitution would arrange and divide the various offices so that each would check the other and thus provide the better motives defects by rival and opposite interests. On Federalist no 10, Madison continued to reason that if public good was not put above personal interest, the solution entails the spirit or faction and part in the ordinary and necessary government operations (Foley, 2017). Because the constitution established a republic, it was sold to the people not to have unrealistic expectations regarding the subjects of consistency and virtue of belief vis-a-vis citizenry.
Conclusion
Driven by the need to solve the problems in the Articles of Confederation, the founding fathers met in Philadelphia to deliberate solutions to forge a new set of laws and policies to govern the young nation. However, they did not have common ideas even though the agenda was shared, as one side advocated for a strong, centralized federal government. At the same time, the other wanted a system of strong states and a weaker central government. Moreover, there were fears and aims, which also contrasted significantly based on ideology. Despite these differences and issues, the founding fathers eventually emerged with a supreme document that governed the country for over three centuries. Specifically, the founding fathers established a system of government with a three-branched structure to address various issues, including oversight and the powers of the government. In their writing of the constitution, they sought the establishment of a federal government which, in their shared view, would serve the country’s best interest quest they came up with an intricated blueprint, among other ease commerce in the state offer the safety of the nation and protects people liberty. While the founding fathers were divided particularly on republicanism and federalism, they premeditated a strategy for a government in which they had a strong desire to be free of self-serving factions.
References
Alsina, V., & MartĂ, J. L. (2018). The birth of the Crowd Law movement: Tech-based citizen participation, legitimacy and the quality of lawmaking. Analyse & Kritik, 40(2), 337-358. Web.
Bailyn, B. (2017). The ideological origins of the American Revolution: Fiftieth-anniversary edition. Harvard University Press.
Beard, C. A. (2012). An economic interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Dover Publications, Inc.
Bernstein, R. B. (2022). Amending America: If we love the Constitution so much, why do we keep trying to change it? Plunkett Lake Press.
Dahl, R. A. (2003). How democratic is the American Constitution? Yale University Press.
Dean, R. J. (2018). Counter-governance: Citizen participation beyond collaboration. Politics and Governance, 6(1), 180-188. Web.
Foley, E. B. (2017). Due process, fair play, and excessive partisanship: A new principle for judicial review of election laws. The University of Chicago Law Review, 655-756. Web.
Ginsberg, B., Lowi, T. J., Weir, M., Tolbert, C. J., & Spitzer, R. J. (2017). We the People: An introduction to American politics. W. W. Norton.
Hannah-Jones, N. (2019). Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. New York Times Magazine. Web.
Kleidosty, J., & Xidias, J. (2017). An Analysis of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay’s The Federalist Papers. Macat Library.
Maggs, G. E. (2017). A concise guide to the Articles of Confederation as a source for determining the Constitution’s original meaning. Geo. Wash. L. Rev., 85, 397. Web.
SajĂł, A., & Uitz, R. (2017). The Constitution of freedom: An introduction to legal constitutionalism. Oxford University Press.