The Constitution of the United States

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If someone asked you what document most significantly affected America, what would your response be? In early 1787, Daniel Shay led a rebellion in Massachusetts in which the response time to put it down caused a meeting for the complete re-evaluation of the efficiency of the Articles of Confederation. The final result of that meeting was not an amendment of the Articles, but an entirely new draft called the Constitution of the United States. Since then, this document has not only been referred to as the “supreme law”, but as the cornerstone and foundation of the United States government. Time after time in American history, its guidelines and effectiveness have proven that the Constitution is not a document to be disregarded. Therefore, the Constitution of the United States should be looked at as a paradigm and fully relied on for all political decisions of this country. In order to learn from the Articles of Confederation, many quandaries needed to be reanalyzed. Perhaps the most important of these to the Constitutional Convention was the powers of the federal government. The framers had much experience with the disastrous effects of power corruption and thus proposed the inception of the three branches of government. The Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches all coexist in our nation for a singular and paramount purpose: to equip this country with an exceptional system of lawmaking and the enforcement of those laws based on the highly efficient concept of checks and balances. This separation of powers and the branches themselves “represent the constitutional framework envisioned by the Founding Fathers for our nation's government” (Longley, 1). Each branch of government has particular powers that are limited, or ... ... middle of paper ... ...e the authority of the very thing that gave them their power. In other words, don’t bite the hand that feeds. To summarize, our nation’s government should not just remember it, but fully rely upon the precedents set by the Constitution of the United States. Most importantly of all, it is the supreme law of the land. This document also describes in detail the duties and requirements of each of the three branches of government. Along with that, the Bill of Rights – which tells us every one of our basic constitutional rights – is a significant part of it. As Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States as well as staunch supporter of the Constitution, said, “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

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