TReading: D & Z 2 U. S. Constitution Declaration of Independence Articles of Confederation EReading: Schuman

The Constitutional Roots of American Government

Next, we are going to explore the basic structural document of American government--The U.S. Constitution. As you will see below, we are going to be exploring the Constitution from a number of perspectives. As part of the "great concepts" approach, we are going to be looking at our constitution in comparison to another. Unfortunately, Ruritania does not have an accessible constitution!
Instead, we are going to explore a different one!

The first thing we need to do is explore some of the social, religious, philosophical, historical and economic factors that influenced the development of the U.S. Constitution

We'll start with some basic empirical analysis: Do MicroCase Exercise 1

1) the individuals and their attitudes

young, wealthy, well-educated, protestant and male

from agricultural or mercantile areas

children of "The Enlightenment"

infatuated with the notion of "science" (the first social scientists!!)


2) protestantism

self-reliance

not obligated to temporal rulers

the notion of covenant


3) the philosophical ideas of the time

Hobbes, Locke (1), (2), Rousseau

"the nature of man"

rights

social contract


4) the historical forces

America as colony

the American Revolution

Read:

The American Revolution as a Constitutional Controversy (access via Essays link)

European revolutions

the Articles of Confederation

Read:

The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution (access via Essays link)

the experience with state governments

Shays' Rebellion


5) the economic context

adjustment after the revolution

competition between the states

no national currency

stay laws

Shays' Rebellion


To access a webpage for the Constitution, click here

Thinking Comparatively:

Our Constitution sets up a particular relationship between people and the state and between institutions of government. Other systems can set up a different set of relationships. Let's look at another one!

To access the 1982 Constitution of the Turkish Republic, click: here Info before you click: after clicking above, click on the spinning world, then the first pink bar labelled "Constitution" then go to "Part 2: Fundamental Rights and Duties"

Questions to Ponder:

Rights vs. Responsibilities While most Americans talk a lot about their "rights", there is no mention of "responsibilities" in the U. S. Constitution. If citizenship entails having certain "rights", shouldn't it also entail some "responsibilities"? While reading D and Z, Schuman, and thinking about the lectures, ponder the following: 1) Did the Founding Fathers intentionally leave out "responsibilities"? (Shuman would argue that they did!). If they did, what messages were the Founders trying to send? 1a) The Bill of Rights are amendments to the original document! What do you think this says about the Founding Fathers' attitudes towards rights? 2) How do the notions of rights and responsibilities fit into each of the three theories? Would the rights and responsibilities be different for each of the three theories? 3) When you look at the Turkish Constitution's Part 2 what do you think of their rights and responsibilities? 4) If the Founding Fathers had included these in the Constitution (or as part of the amendments) how might it have changed the actions of our national government?

To access POLIWEB's Founding Fathers Document page, click here

Previous Lecture Next Lecture Lectures Page Course Homepage