09 January 2008
The Constitutional Convention of 1787
On May 15, 1776, the convention meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, and acting as that state's de facto governing body instructed that Colony's delegates at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to introduce a resolution declaring "the United Colonies free and independent states."
That Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, set the former Colonies on an irrevocable course that created the United States of America. But the creation of the United States of America did not occur all at once. Eleven years later, another group of delegates journeyed to Philadelphia to write a constitution for the new nation, a constitution that still defines its law and character.
The road from independence to constitutional government was one of the great journeys in the history of democratic government, a road characterized by experiment, by mistakes, but ultimately producing surely the most influential national constitution ever written. Even before the break with Great Britain, the American Colonies saw to the nurturing of their future constitutional culture.
The lower houses of the Colonial assemblies were the most democratic bodies in the English-speaking world, and dialogue with the mother country sharpened the Americans' sense of constitutional issues. For a decade before the outbreak of the Revolution, disputes over taxes, trials without juries and other issues led to an outpouring of pamphlets, tracts, and resolutions -- all making essentially a constitutional case against British policy.
Declaring independence, the founders of American democracy understood, entailed establishing the intellectual basis for self-government. On the same day that the Williamsburg convention spoke for independence, the delegates set to work on a declaration of rights and on a constitution for Virginia. Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights soon was emulated in other states and even influenced France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789).
The early American state constitutions -- every state adopted one -- varied in their specifics (for example, some created a unicameral legislature, others opted for bicameralism). But they shared a basic commitment to republican principles, principles that then seemed truly revolutionary in most parts of the world -- consent of the governed, limited government, inherent rights and popular control of government.
These early experiments in republican government carried significant flaws. Recalling their experience as North American colonists with British royal power (including Colonial governors and courts), drafters of the initial state constitutions placed excessive trust in legislatures. Checks and balances among branches of government were more theory than reality. Governors typically were elected by (and thus dependent on) the legislative branches, and judicial power largely was embryonic. Another flaw in the original design was that constitutions were drafted by entities that also served as legislative bodies, thus blurring the line between fundamental law and ordinary law.
However, in 1780, Massachusetts took a great step forward in constitutional design when its people elected a convention to write a constitution. That document was voted on in a referendum.
