Constitution and popular sovereignty

Development of the United States Constitution to Ensure Popular Sovereignty In 1776 the United States declared its independence from the tyrannical British Empire and has been growing as a nation ever since then.

The first constitution that the United States developed as a united country was the Articles of Confederation, which failed horribly. But learning from the mistakes made in the Articles of Confederation the brilliant minds of early America drafted the Constitution, a document that still governs the states to this day with only being amended 27 times.In order to be this successful it was written very broadly with a lot of room for interpretation because every problem couldn’t be addressed. One problem that the Founding Fathers made sure to address was popular sovereignty, in fear of another tyrannical king. The Constitution ensured popular sovereignty with regulations on term limits, the bill of rights and the separation of powers. Paranoid because of the recent revolution from Great Britain and its tyrannical government many founders wanted regulations on terms in order for the leader to not become too powerful.

Under the Constitution the citizens get to vote the governing officials into office in order to represent them in the best way possible. The terms need to be long enough that the officials have an ample amount of time to be helpful to society but not too long as they can establish a dictatorship or resemble anything of a monarchy. Edmund Randolph brings up the topic of restricting the amount of time that an official can serve as well as the frequency of reelections (Document B).While Madison reports that the officials elected to the National Legislature will be elected for a term of three years by the “people” (Document C).

These people are only the free white men otherwise they counted as three fifths of a vote or not at all. But after many years and many activists every American has the right to vote in order to protect the popular sovereignty. The glue that holds our great country of America together today and what has for many years is our Constitution, but for a short time it lacked the first ten much needed amendments, called the Bill of Rights.On June 8, 1789 one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, James Madison proposed the Bill of rights to the House of Representatives (Document F).

He and many other patriots saw that there were certain areas that had not been addressed in the Constitution that left the ability for those who were in the central government to abuse their powers and unreasonably control the American people.Now you have to take into consideration that the American citizens had to battle for years just to be free of the tyrannical powers of the King of England, and they wanted to make sure at all costs that this did not happen again. A constitution that ensured popular sovereignty was the only answer to this dilemma. The Bill of Rights was soon after ratified and it ensured the people liberties such as, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…,” (Document G).These rights given to the people among many others which were not mentioned made it so that the central government could do their job of governing the people, but they also gave the people the right to rebel and speak out against the government if they were being treated unfairly. Without the Bill of Rights being added to the Constitution of this country there would be no popular sovereignty or even a country today.

Can you imagine how hostile the world would be if one person had all the power, if we had to rely on one person to make the decisions for the whole nation?That’s what the world would be like without separation of powers, that’s how it was when there was a king. Separation of powers is used in government, powers are split evenly between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches so one branch of government doesn’t have more power than another. “That nothing contained in the said Constitution is to be construed to prevent the legislature of any state from passing laws at its discretion, from time to time, to divide such state into convenient districts. ’’(Document H).From this part of the article you can see that there was a slight separation of powers, but overtime it became more established within the government. The 1777 Articles of Confederation states “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

” (Document A). It tells the rights and powers that the states are supposed to have, but it doesn’t tell us how to obtain those rights, and it doesn’t tell us our personal rights.Separation of powers played an important role in what is now popular sovereignty. As a result of government powers being split up we don’t have to worry about the president making every decision.

Without separation of powers popular sovereignty wouldn’t really matter, the people would get to elect their president, but after that all the decisions would be based on what he or she wants, no one would have the power to overrule them. With the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights many things changed.As a result of the Constitution being more specific, but not to the point that it controlled every aspect of your life, the United States gained structure coming from the government, but the citizens also have the right to govern themselves known as popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty was gained through regulated term limits, the Bill of Rights, and the separation of powers. When the Constitution was first ratified people overlooked its slight flaws because they weren’t used to the new composition of the government.It wasn’t until the Bills of Rights, specifically the Ninth and Tenth Amendment, that we gained popular sovereignty.

As the years go on the US Constitution continues to persevere, it has been amended a total of 27 times, but that’s only because the Founding Fathers wrote it broadly, knowing that times would change so the laws would have to as well. Overall, the Constitution gives us popular sovereignty, not only so the people wouldn’t attempt to overrun the government, but so that all people, not just the ones that are a part of government, play a huge role in how their country is ran.