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Constitution Essay

Essay by   •  December 26, 2010  •  702 Words (3 Pages)  •  1,685 Views

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Constitution Essay

Our constitution is the basis of what this country is about. This country stands for freedom and starting a life where you truly have the free will to do as you please. The constitution wasn't created right away, opposed to what many people think. They had to go through trial and error until they came about the Constitution. First, there was the Articles Of Confederation, which was a rough layout of the Constitution. Then when we found the flaws in that we created the amendments. The main amendments to the Constitution are the first ten, which protect the rights of the people; these have come around to be known as The Bill Of Rights.

The first shot at establishing a government was the Articles Of Confederation. The purpose of this was to not establish a government but rather a "firm league of friendship". The Articles gave most of the power to the states, which in turn gave us a weak central government with no communication between the states. Each state also only got one vote on congress no matter what size your states population might have been. The other big flaw in the Articles Of Confederation was that the states had to provide for the general welfare of their own people.

The Constitution on the other hand is what our mighty country uses today. In the Constitution our government owns today we have a bicameral legislature, unlike the unicameral legislature of the Articles. In a bicameral legislature we have the House of Representatives and the Senate. Under the Constitution most of our power lies within the government not the states. In order for this to work we had to create a series of checks and balances.

Even though there are some similarities between the Articles Of Confederation and the Constitution there are a vast number of differences. First, the articles had a very weak central government, where as the Constitution's main focus is a strong central government. Second, in the Articles Of Confederation the government did not have the power to tax the states. In the Constitution they do. To go along with this in the Articles Of Confederation the government had no power in regulating trade between the states and enforcing the national laws the states were supposed to abide by. They made sure to change that in the Constitution. Now

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