To what extent is the American Constitution an elitist document?

To what completion is the Ameri flush toilet organic law an elitist document? Why thusly did the framers return for public fractureicipation in the policy-making process? The stovepipe way to approach this assignment is to split it into two and answer starting line-year to what extent do I feel the Ameri jakes Constitution an elitist document. When this has been answered consequently it will be possible to move on to try to record wherefore the framers of the constitution provided for public fraternity in the political process.I should begin by saying that I think the Constitution is a truly elitist document, but before I elaborate on that stamp I feel that it is requisite to firstly define what an elite is, and to a fault to provide a bit of background information on the Constitution. An elite is define by Websters Dictionary as the trump of a class the socially superior part of society or a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise power or influence.When we talk about elites though we fuck off to bear in encephalon that they prize stage and stability above all else, and if they can keep abreast the emplacement quo they will, however this is diverting from the main point. It is perhaps the last part of the definition that is approximately relevant when we come to the American Constitution, and ask ourselves to what extent it is an elitist document. Before I come to that though I feel that it is necessary to explain how the Constitution of the United States of America came into being.Without going too march on back into history, the xiii North American colonies had rebelled against the British administration later on coming to see King George III and his colonial governors as tyrants, and as well as there were dis cast offes over taxes that had to paid both to the colonial legislatures and the British establishment. These tensions r for apiece stared a climax in 1775 and the American War of Independence broke out. This fight lasted until 1783, when the British granted independence to each of the long dozen colonies.Each of the thirteen states were now independent and bound to raise upher under a jumbohearted agreement called the Articles of Confederation (AOC). The Articles of Confederation provided for a unicameral legislature with each state being allotted representatives establish upon their total population, but each state had nevertheless 1 vote in the legislature. There were human racey flaws in this arrangement like the event that there was no administrator body the fact that nine states had to agree to pass legislation and crucially the AOC could non legislate in the following expanses The study government could not levy taxes, only request funds from the states. This resulted in the national government going into debt almost immediately.* The national government could not bilk barter and each state had set up tariffs against the other. The result was a creat e economic recession. * The national government did not lose exclusive laterality over the money supply. Each state and the national government had its have money supply. In the face of these crises, the elites (for want of a better word), of the thirteen states decided unilaterally to revise the AOC, and so the Constitution of 1787 was born.It is now metre to examine to what extent the Constitution is an elitist document. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic help tranquillity, provide for the plebeian defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 1 Superficially at least the Constitution can be said to be a in truth elitist document by virtue of the way in which it came into being.It was scripted by fifty-five men out of a population of around four million. If we consi der that the framing of the Constitution to be the real graduation exercise of the USA, which was in theory supposed to be a democracy, so we have to see the Constitution to be an elitist document because of the way in which the mental hospital Fathers (a tiny fraction of the population) decided to scrap the AOC and come up with an resource behind closed doors, without the majority of the population knowing what was going on. other superficial argument can be make based upon the fact that the delegates who signed the Constitution were as Thomas Jefferson put it an assembly of demigods. jibe to Dye and Zeigler the men at the convention belonged to the nations intellectual and economic elites2. consequently the Constitution was always going to be biased towards elites because even though the majority of the population were piddling freeholding farmers their views were not interpreted into account at the Convention for the simple solid ground that none of the delegates really came from that section of the nation.As I have said both these reasons are superficial, but if we get into the detail of the constitution then we can see that it is a truly elitist document in several key areas. The first is economic elitism. The Constitution gave recounting power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States3. This is all well and good, but when taken with the fact that according to Article 1 slit 2 Representatives and train taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included at heart this Union, according to their respective numbers4 taxation and representation based upon population. This meant in essence that a rich man paid on the button the same amount of tax as a poor man regardless of his wealth, and if we consider that the men at the convention were all very well-off if not highly rich, then whatever their intentions were the constitution could only benefit them and those like them.The Constitution also gave Congress the power to regulate commerce between the states. This command in concert with the provision that No tax or duty shall be paid on articles exported from any(prenominal) state5 created a huge free trade area were none had existed before, and of course this would be very beneficial to those American merchants including some of the framers of the Constitution- that traded across the USA.Again we can see just how elitist the Constitution is because it benefits big business even though the majority of the population were small freeholders and small merchants that benefited from a certain degree of protectionism. Economic elitism can also be seen in the parts of the constitution that give Congress powers over the regulation and value of money, bankruptcy laws, weights and measures, and so forth. These powers would enhance financial stability in the nation and this move could only benefit the more economically orientated members of the Constitutional Convention.There is also evidence of military elitism within the Constitution. Section 8 of Article 1 provides for the creation of an army and navy. Naturally a nation needs an army and navy, but this act has to be seen in the context of just what the American elites gained from it. The Constitution concentrated the military great power of the USA under the Commander in Chief aka the President. The President also had the power, with the advice of the senate, to suffice treaties and to send and receive ambassadors.We have seen that the Founding Fathers wished to create a strong centralised government and this concentration of military and diplomatic expertness gave them the ability to do just that, with the added benefit of giving them the means to put down any revolution that might occur. Therefore in this wizard it can be shown that the Co nstitution is an elitist document since it enshrined the pronenesss of the Founding Fathers for stability and freedom from revolution, and since the President who commanded all this great power would invariably be a member of the elites himself, their position within society could and would be safeguarded.Other instances of elitism within the Constitution are the sections that deal with striverry No person held to attend or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in egress of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from much(prenominal) service or labour, but shall be delivered up on call of the party to whom such(prenominal) service or labour may be due6. As can be seen this section allows the continuation of the slave holding elites within American society, at a time when the paper of all men being equal was being bandied about. From the above we can see that the Constitution of the USA is elitist, then we have to ask the question tha t why, if the document is elitist, did the framers provide for public participation in the electoral process.Firstly, if we tackle that the framers of the Constitution were the nations elites, then we have to remember that above all else elites desire order and stability. Therefore at a very basic aim the answer to the question would be that as elites (by their very definition) make up a tiny percentage of the populaton then it would be in their best interests to provide for public participation in the political process because of the fortuity that the masses could rise up against them, as they themselves had rebelled against the British.But if we look at the question in detail we can see that the real reason that the framers provided for public participation in the political process was that the publics participation was extremely curb in scale. Examples of this would be the way in which the framers adopted the idea of the separation of powers and the dodging of checks and ba lances whereby legislative powers were vested in a Congress and Senate executive powers in a President and judicial powers in a despotic Court.Each of these institutions were elected by different constituencies (or in the case of the peremptory Court appointed by the President), and each served different lengths of terms. This prevented the complete successor of government at a stroke and created continuity within the national government, but regardless of any benefits that this system might have, the fact cannot be avoided that if the people wish to have a change of government, or make their feelings known at all, then they must wait years for it, which is exactly a fair system.The system of checks and balances also diminishes the publics participation in the political process, because, for example, the people elect a President who is radical and wishes to change the status quo, then he can issue executive orders, but Congress can override those orders, and if the president wis hes to execute laws he has to rely on executive departments created by Congress. The best justification for this system comes from either mob Madison or Alexander Hamilton when they wrote Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the implicit in(p) rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the superlative of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place give it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the special control on the government but experience has ta ught mankind the indispensableness of auxiliary precautions. 7 Judicial Review is another key opinion of the system of checks and balances. This is basically an idea that arose from the Marbury v.Madison Case of 1803, whereby the Chief judge argued that the Supreme Court had the power not only to invalidate laws passed by the lower courts, but also to invalidate laws passed by the elected Congress. From this we can see just how limited the public participation in the political process was because the Congress elected by the people was able to be overruled by the appointed Supreme Court. However the great example of how limited the publics participation was in the political process, was the way in which the resources were conducted.By this I mean specifically the elitist way in which the smaller states did not have the same degree of representation, and thus power of the larger states, for example Rhode Island had one representative in Congress, while Virginia had ten. And even this pales in comparison with the electoral College. Essentially when the people vote in a presidential election they vote for delegates to the Electoral College who then choose the president from the candidates.What is wrong with this system is when you take into consideration that each state sends delegates to the Electoral College on a basis of population and in each state the candidate with the most votes takes all the electoral votes (even if they win by only 1%) then those who did not vote for the candidate are effectively throwing their votes away. This system is further complicated by the fact that in the beginning the Electoral College was envisaged as a way for the elites to ensure that their preferred candidate got the job, and to enable them to correct any misjudgements the public might have made on polling day.In certainty therefore it can be seen that the American Constitution is a very elitist document, by virtue of the way in which it was conceived the men who wrote it the economic elitism imbedded in the document and of course the military elitism. Secondly the question as to why the framers of the Constitution provided for public participation is an easy one they provided for public participation because they had diluted it so much, and built in so many checks and balances that they did not have to worry about threats to stability and order, which were after all the greatest concerns of elites.