Madison vs Marshall :: essays papers

capital of Wisconsin vs Marsh entirelyUpon the Declaration of Independence, a plan of confederation was offered to be wide-awake for the colonies. This plan, known as The Articles of Confederation, established a league of friendship among the states alternatively than a national presidential term. The most significant fact about the created political science was its weakness, it could not enforce even the limited powers it had. In crowd Madisons words, in his Federalist Paper 10 complaints are e verywhere heardthat our governments are too unstable. The states had won their freedom except had been unable to form a nation. They fought among themselves, suffered from severe economic depression, and came close to losing the recreation they had won in war. These political and economic factors generated pressure for the creation of a new national government and a disposition. In Madisons view, politics was overrun by different factions, which were groups of people who shared the aforesaid(prenominal) interests, different from other people or the opinion of the whole. These factions, he thought, prevented the government from its most important task, which in his opinion was to protect the owners of the land and property. The ownership of the land was divided according to peoples different skills, faculties, and according to Madison, the protection of these faculties is the first object of the government. And since the bulk of the people were farmers and poor, and since those who hold and those who are without property have ever create distinct interests in society, Madison wanted a constitution that would give the government the power to control the majority. In his address to the American Bar Association, Thurgood Marshall criticizes the constitution by saying that I do not believe that the content of the Constitution was forever fixed at the Philadelphia convention. In his opinion the government that they devised was defective from the beginning, mean ing that the Constitution required several amendments before it became what people today give as the basic structure of the American government. The constitution is very different today than what the framers began to construct two centuries ago. Marshall thinks that there was very much wrong with the original document, he finds many inherent defects, but is free to admit that it was a product of its times and embodied a via media that, under other circumstances, would not have been made. By this he means the contradiction between promising liberty and justice for all and denying both from blacks.