Which criticism of the constitution is the most accurate

Fearful that the cause for the Constitution might be lost in his home state, Alexander Hamilton devised a plan to write a series of letters or essays rebutting the critics. It is not surprising that Hamilton, a brilliant lawyer, came forward at this moment to defend the new Constitution. At Philadelphia, he was the only New Yorker to have signed the Constitution. The other New York delegates had angrily left the Convention convinced that the rights of the people were being abandoned.

Hamilton himself was very much in favor of strengthening the central government. Hamilton soon backed away from these ideas, and decided that the Constitution, as written, was the best one possible. He signed the articles with the Roman name "Publius. Hamilton soon recruited two others, James Madison and John Jay, to contribute essays to the series. They also used the pseudonym "Publius. As a delegate from Virginia, he participated actively in the debates.

He also kept detailed notes of the proceedings and drafted much of the Constitution. A judge and diplomat, he was serving as secretary of foreign affairs in the national government. Hamilton wrote over 60 percent of these essays and helped with the writing of others. Madison probably wrote about a third of them with Jay composing the rest.

The essays had an immediate impact on the ratification debate in New York and in the other states. By this time the identity of "Publius," never a well-kept secret, was pretty well known. The Federalist , also called The Federalist Papers , has served two very different purposes in American history.

The 85 essays succeeded by helping to persuade doubtful New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution. Today, The Federalist Papers helps us to more clearly understand what the writers of the Constitution had in mind when they drafted that amazing document years ago. After each selection are two kinds of activities. The first activity includes questions that should be discussed and answered by the whole class or in small groups. If necessary, refer to a dictionary or your government textbook.

The second activity after each selection is intended as an individual or homework assignment. Federalist Paper Alexander Hamilton The principle purposes to be answered by Union are these -- The common defense of the members -- the preservation of the public peace as well as against internal convulsions as external attacks -- the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States -- the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.

For Discussion 1. According to Hamilton, what are the main purposes of forming a Union under the Constitution?

Nor is unfair distribution of federal money the only way in which equal state representation in the Senate has an impact. Senators from small states represent a more homogeneous electorate than large state senators and thus the politics of small states are easier to manage. Partly for that reason, small-state electorates are more satisfied with their senators than are the voters of large states, according to findings on senator job performance by Lee and Oppenheimer.

Small-state Senate races are also less competitive, allowing for a wider margin of victory. For example, the defense of equal representation based on the alleged need to protect small states from the tyranny of larger states does not hold up to examination: The large states have never shown any tendency to tyrannize the small. Indeed the only time when the states divided into interest groups based on size was during the debate over Senate representation at the Constitutional Convention.

The argument that the Senate is supposed to reflect the federalist nature of the country by representing the states themselves is correct as far as it goes but does not justify the gross malapportionment of the current Senate. According to Lee and Oppenheimer other countries with federalist systems and bicameral legislatures do not grant full equality to the federal units in either house.

The U. Senate is by far the most malapportioned legislature in the modern, democratic world. Thus the case against equal representation in the Senate is strong. No less of an authority than Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan thought so. Already we have seven states with two senators and one representative. The Senate is beginning to look like the pre-reform British House of Commons.

This question applies to many of the recommendations made by Levinson and the other authors. It is enough to say now that the cause of reapportionment of the Senate looks almost lost, since equal state representation of the Senate is the only provision of the Constitution not susceptible to amendment under Article V, which prohibits changing the number of senators states may have. Separation of powers — defined as an executive who is chosen independently of the legislature — is not the main concern for Levinson and Dahl.

Despite his own preference for a parliamentary system, Dahl acknowledges in How Democratic Is the American Constitution? Lazare is explicitly hostile to separation of powers. Wilson and John J. Aspects of the Constitution that are central to separation of powers include the bicameral Congress, the presidential veto, and judicial review.

One can concede the case against equal state representation in the Senate and still maintain that a second branch to the legislature is essential to the constitutional scheme.

Nothing could be more preposterous than to sacrifice the former to the latter. Would our response be to turn the dice, the bird, or the moon into a permanent part of the government? Can a case be made, then, for a more proportioned Senate? We have to go back to the original logic of checks and balances.

The peculiar way the American Constitution maintains separation of powers as a functioning reality is to have the three branches overlap by giving each some power over the others, so making the branches as coequal in power as is possible. The famous passage from the Federalist No. And, of course, since Marbury v. Madison judicial review has been the power that fortified the judiciary. Thus bicameralism, the presidential veto, and judicial review are the bedrock foundation of checks and balances and hence of the Constitution.

Here then is at least part of the argument for a bicameral Congress. A unicameral legislature would completely overwhelm the executive and complete the politicization of administration that already is a constant threat to good government. Next to these the powers of the president are already few.

Certainly he has considerable power as commander in chief of the armed forces. Most of his other powers are sharply limited and subject to Senate approval. It is important to maintain the legislative and executive branches as close to coequal forces because at stake is control over the bureaucracy.

Parliamentary systems center control of the bureaucracy in the hands of the prime minister and make lobbying the legislature to influence the bureaucracy very difficult. In their tome Do Institutions Matter? In a separation-of-powers system citizens can and do successfully bring their complaints with the bureaucracy to the legislature.

Under our Constitution, Congress has at least as much control over the bureaucracy as the president, if not more. Wilson writes:. It is this behemoth of organizational and political capacity that critics and skeptics of bicameralism wish to fortify still more by unifying it and so doing away with its last internal constraint. N or is that all. It does, after all, exemplify just one more antimajoritarian feature of our Constitution that serves to make it ever harder to pass legislation departing from the status quo.

He points out that for various reasons many presidents — he names George W. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton — simply did not receive the majority of the popular vote that is the most plausible basis for the claim of a mandate. The constitutional critics discussed here are in agreement that in general the aura of power and prestige that surrounds the American president needs to be dimmed a bit. He objects to what he sees as a presidency that combines the functions of chief of state and chief of government, which are separated in most other modern democracies.

One may wonder whether a very strong presidency is appropriate for a modern democracy. But it is more certain that the current veto power is indispensable if a strong presidency is desired. But it is potentially misleading to think of the first use — to enable the executive to defend himself — as a constitutionally-based veto.

The answer is Congress. In an apparent reference to the defense of separation of powers in Federalist No. I n short, the constitutional critics once again turn out to be unenthusiastic about separation of powers. The term itself comes up only in passing in Lazare, but the upshot of his analysis is that he is against it.

Those, such as the present author, who regard separation of powers as an indispensable part of the American political order will find themselves skeptical of these criticisms. By this definition the modern United Kingdom, and most other parliamentary systems, would count as tyrannies.

Whatever one thinks of the relative merits of parliamentary and separation-of-powers systems, few people today would argue that countries with parliamentary systems are by virtue of that fact tyrannies. What good, then, is separation of powers if not as a barrier to tyranny?

The question of what difference separation of powers makes has been answered by economists Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini in their theoretical work, Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy and in their empirical study The Economic Effects of Constitutions.

The parliamentary system, the two authors tell us in Political Economics , leads us to larger government and more spending on public goods, more waste and taxation. What do the data say about all this theory? Persson and Tabellini looked at two data sets.

For cross-sectional analysis they used data on 85 democracies during the s. To study changes over time they developed a panel set of data that tracks 60 countries over the period They found the data strongly support predictions regarding the size of government. Unconditionally, presidential democracies do have lower spending than parliamentary democracies. The data analyses also show that the size of welfare programs is about 2 percent lower in presidential systems than in parliamentary ones.

The American separation-of-powers system probably results in a smaller government and in particular a smaller welfare state than we would otherwise have. If one is in favor of a larger government, then separation of powers is a problem; otherwise, it is not. One can make a case for either preference. It took 10 months for the first nine states to approve the Constitution. The first state to ratify was Delaware, on December 7, , by a unanimous vote, 30 - 0.

The featured document is an endorsed ratification of the federal Constitution by the Delaware convention. The names of the state deputies are listed, probably in the hand of a clerk.

The signature of the President of Delaware's convention, Thomas Collins, attests to the validity of the document, which also carries the state seal in its left margin. Delaware's speediness thwarted Pennsylvania's attempt to be first to ratify in the hope of securing the seat of the National Government in Pennsylvania.

The first real test for ratification occurred in Massachusetts, where the fully recorded debates reveal that the recommendation for a bill of rights proved to be a remedy for the logjam in the ratifying convention. New Hampshire became the ninth state to approve the Constitution in June, but the key States of Virginia and New York were locked in bitter debates. Their failure to ratify would reduce the new union by two large, populated, wealthy states, and would geographically splinter it.

When a bill of rights was proposed in Congress in , North Carolina ratified the Constitution. Finally, Rhode Island, which had rejected the Constitution in March by popular referendum, called a ratifying convention in as specified by the Constitutional Convention.

Faced with threatened treatment as a foreign government, it ratified the Constitution by the narrowest margin two votes on May 29, Click to Enlarge.

Read the Transcription.