Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation And The Constitution

With the United States new found independence from Great Britain, its founding fathers realize from their historical experiences that a document of law needed to be crafted and established to preserve its new found independence, while maintaining order. However, the first document crafted by the founding fathers, the Articles of Confederation, did preserve the country new found independence but it did not maintain order. The Articles of Confederation described by many founding fathers to be a document that was crafted to satisfy needs of every state for its ratification, even when the document did not present a responsible democracy. The Articles of Confederation granted all national powers to the congress; however, it allowed each state

The Articles of Confederation was first written in 1777. It was passed by the Confederation of Congress. Congress decided that they needed a firm government to organize the states as a whole. At least that was their primary goal. Since each state had separates rules. The Articles of Confederation was later ratified by each state in 1781. It was “America’s first federal constitution” (Keene 138). The confederation had a few strengths but many weaknesses. The nation faced many economic and political issues that lead people to controversy.

There were a lot of problems with the Articles of Confederation. Some of which made it so bad to the point of people rebelling against the government. There were states taxing each other way too much. Some states struggled to get any kind of help because the majority of the states has to vote to help a state before it can get help. There were also strengths, like every state followed its own laws and jurisdiction. There were more weaknesses than strengths.

One of the main disadvantages of the Articles of Confederation was that it encouraged a weak central government. Because nine out of thirteen states had to agree upon a law in order for it to be established, very few laws were passed. Amendments of the Articles of Confederation were never passed because the vote had to be unanimous. Not many decisions were made and the Congress generally only had the power to make treaties, deal with foreign affairs, and declare war. The Articles of Confederation read, “Each state shall contain its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right…” (Article II) The states had the most power and the Congress very rarely made decisions that affected the internal affairs of the states or country. There was only one house of Congress where each state only had one vote. This did not allow the bigger states with a greater population to have an advantage over the smaller states, which one could perceive as unfair in certain circumstances. Also, there was no judicial branch, which meant that if a case was not solved on a state level, it had nowhere to go. Fundamentally, the states held the most power. The lack of power within the Congress led to economic crisis.

They were a few shortcomings and advantages in the new government under the Articles of Confederation I would like to discuss. First of all the weaknesses that articles of confederation have gone through were certain people in the congress lacked leadership, could not tax, there militia or military was small, and one vote per state. The advantages they had were that they could borrow money and make peace also sign treaties. There were several sentiments and ideas. The “new vision want to make political authority legitimate and secure liberty” (Wilson, 2008, p.20). The system of government was established by articles to respect liberties given to them. Founding fathers replaced the document because certain states used the document for different

The Articles of Confederation was the first constitution of the United States. They were written during the revolutionary war to create a more unified government, and to establish what the national government could and could not do. The Articles let each state keep “sovereignty, freedom, and independence,” and created a very weak central government. For example, Congress could not regulate commerce or impose taxes. The impact that the Articles of Confederation had on federalism for the next few years was: the federal government had very few powers, and most of the authority remained in control of each individual state.

During the era or time in which the Articles of Confederation were in place, the document had a lot of weakness; maybe too many weaknesses. These weaknesses included: It had created a struggling economy, had no Judiciary, only had a legislature (Congress), no executive (President), and gave too much power to the states or the people. A weakness that the Articles had been that the people thought that the government would help with the economy. This caused a struggling economy, and that had a lot of consequences like Continental Army marching against the government for

The Articles of Confederation have strengths and weakness. I am going to start with the strengths. The first strength and the important one is having thirteen colonies united under one government that make these colonies a strong country together. Another strength is given the departments a specific defined roles for various parties to run the country more effectively. The Articles of Confederation inspired the coordination and cooperation between different states, so that’s also one of the strength of the Articles of Confederation. “It allowed the Central Government to sign treaties and peace deals with other countries giving rise to a stable neighborhood. The peace treaty with England was one such deal.” (Web) Having a stable country is most important thing to have a strong new country, and to have a stable country it should be peace between the states. And that is what the Article of Confederation accomplished. Finally, the population got increased to more than 60000 as big untied country and that could increase the economy of the country too because more people means more tax.

First, the Articles of Confederation were viewed as an overall weakness. It did not allow congress to obtain really any power over the people; therefore we had a weak central government. Congress was not granted the power that they needed in order to keep things in order,“Probably the most unfortunate part of the Articles of confederation were that the central government could not prevent one state from discriminating against other states in the quest for foreign commerce.” (Ginsberg, et. al. 2014: 35). States were rebelling and our new found country was in chaos and our Congress was not able to prevent states from discriminating against other states. For example, another downfall to this document was that, “The Articles of Confederation were concerned

The Articles of Confederation, although a big first step, had more weaknesses than strengths. In fact, the major downfall of the Articles of Confederation was its weakness. Under the Articles, the federal government had little power and was too weak to enforce any laws. The Articles gave Congress the power to pass new laws but they did not have any power to enforce them. If a state decided that they did not want to follow a law then they could just ignore it. Congress also had no power to regulate trade or levy taxes and without an executive leader or federal court system there was no way to enforce anything. Another large downfall of the Articles of Confederation is that to Amend it required a unanimous decision which in most cases is extremely difficult. Because the Articles of Confederation are often considered a failure, it’s easy to look past the achievements of the American government under those Articles. The most important piece of legislation passed under the Articles of Confederation is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This Ordinance provided the guidelines by which new states would use to be admitted into the Union. Judges and Governors appointed by Congress would oversee a territory until there was five-thousand free male citizens of voting age. The citizens would then elect a territorial legislature, which sent a non-voting delegate to Congress. When the population hit sixty-thousand, the territorial legislature would be eligible to submit a state constitution,

The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. Although, it established a weak central government, it contributed to U.S principles because The Articles of Confederation were the basis of the first government of the United States of America. The Articles were essentially the “training wheels” of the government; it was a learning point to create something much greater which became the Constitution. The problems that this weak document created, combined with the Confederation government’s ineffectual response to Shays’ Rebellion, convinced national leaders that a more powerful central government was necessary.

After fighting for our country against Great Britain in the American Revolution, the United States gained independence. We had to figure out how to govern ourselves since we would no longer be under the power of the monarch. The Articles of Confederation was the answer to our problems; even though it established a very weak central government and had many problems, it was our first constitution and our first step towards a solid government. Some of the problems with the Articles included that the Congress had no power to tax, no power to regulate commerce, no power to regulate domestic affairs, no power to enforce laws, and many more. The problems lead to troubles with the States which convinced the Continental Congress to create a convention of delegated people to revise them; this convention was called the Constitutional Convention. The Convention fixed these problems by throwing the Articles out altogether and creating a new Constitution.

The Articles of Confederation was the United State’s first constitution, it was written in an effort to unite the states after the American Revolution and served as a blueprint for the modern constitution. In order for the Articles to become official, they had to be approved by all thirteen colonies. Although Congress sent the Articles of Confederation to the states around the end of 1777 to become ratified, they were not officially adopted until March 1, 1781. Under these Articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. The American people feared a strong national government and as a result of this, the Articles of Confederation were specifically designed to be weak in the sense that each state maintains its own sovereignty and all rights to govern themselves, with the except of the rights exclusively granted to Congress. Since the Articles lacked many necessary components to keep a nation properly structured, they were eventually revised into the constitution we recognize today. Although, the Articles of Confederation seemed as though it only contained weaknesses, within the document, many strengths and accomplishments were made. Overall, the Articles of Confederation were proven to be both efficient and non-efficient during the time period they were in effect.

The Articles of Confederations first weakness was that it did not give the federal government enough power to enforce laws. No matter the size of a state they were allowed one government a vote. There was no power to regulate trade and commerce between states, meaning that each state was allowed to regulate and determine taxes on their own trade. The national government had to rely on the states money because it had no power to tax. Each state had their own money and regulated it themselves. The Articles did not establish a strong and solid leader, which meant no president. There was also a fault in which it could take a long time to change the Articles themselves. In order to make any changes to them it required a unanimous vote.

The national government of the United States had many challenges under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles caused money problems and the most essential detail, a weak government. This also caused America conflicts among each of the 13 states. These problems greatly impacted the United States and it’s government as well.