Essay On How Did The Constitution Guard Against Tyranny

How Did the Constitution Guard Against Tyranny?

When the Framers of the Constitution were writing the document that would lead our nation, they had the responsibility of tackling a very big issue: tyranny. They had to create a government that was strong enough to serve its people but limited enough to prevent a tyranny.

Fifty-five delegates from eleven states participated in shaping the Constitution. They were all white, male, and mostly rich. Their goal was to create a document that would help guide the government in building a stronger nation- a much needed fix after the Articles of Confederation left the country in its damaged state. Also, they wanted to ensure that they solved the grievances listed against King George III. In the end,

Republicanism is the idea that citizens have the right to elect political representatives to express their views within the government. An important figure during the writing of the Constitution, James Madison's goal was to design a representation system that would satisfy both large and small states. He was trying to prevent the large states from accumulating too much power due to their increased representation, which in turn was a result of their larger populations. He suggested that Congress be broken up into two houses: the Senate and House of Representatives. In the House of representatives, the representation of each state can be determined by its population, and in the Senate, each state will have exactly two representatives. This solution was implemented by our government (Congress), as currently, Congress is made up of two houses. Because of this system, the larger states have never drastically tipped the scales due to their

After establishing each branch and determining its purpose, his goal was to arrange them in a way that they would be able to limit and have appropriate constitutional control over each other. By doing so, he was able to prevent one branch from following through with a plan without approval from the remaining branches of government. "...(The three branches) should not be so far separated as to have no constitutional control over each other." (James Madison, Federalist Paper #51, 1788). In this quote, James Madison is basically stating the that each branch should be limited by as well as have constitutional control over the other two branches. This solution was implemented into the articles of the Constitution. Our government was built this way and has stayed in that formation ever since. So far, due to the principles of Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances,, we have never come close to becoming a tyranny. As previously mentioned, our government has three different, distinct branches, and tyranny can only happen if absolute power is in the hands of one political group or