United States Constitution and Federalism

¶ … Constitution of the United States was ratified after lengthy debate, mainly focused around issues related to the powers that would be bequeathed to the federal government. Although a gross oversimplification, the debate can be loosely qualified as being one between federalists on the one hand, and antifederalists on the other. Federalists, among them founding father luminaries from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin to James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, believed that a strong central government was the key to forming a successful and resilient new nation in the immediate aftermath of the colonies' divorce from Great Britain. The federalist views permeated the discussions and debates at the Philadelphia Convention, at which the Constitution of the United States was hammered out, drafted, and eventually ratified into the law of the land. The Constitution of the United States replaced the Articles of Confederation, which called for a looser union of states than that which was proposed by the federalists. Antifederalists varied in their stances, but mainly believed that the United States should be bound by a loose confederation, and that state governments should supersede that of a centralized federal power in order to prevent tyranny and oligarchy. Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry were among the most vocal antifederalists, with some prominent framers like John Dickinson emerging as moderates determined to reach a compromise that would become the foundation stone of the Constitution.

Although antifederalist sentiments did make their way into the Constitution of the United States after it was ratified, the document that became the cornerstone of American law bears far more federalist features. As Rose (1990) points out, antifederalism was all but silenced in the Constitution and represents the "road not taken" in American history (p. 74). Federalism has become central to the identity of the United States, to the point where the Civil War was later fought with federalist ideals in mind, and the constitutions of many other emerging democracies since the United States have modelled their constitutions after the American one (Rose, 1990). However, antifederalists did make their stamp on the Constitution and on American history.

One of the reasons why the Constitutional Convention ended up being as drawn out and lengthy as it was, was due to the vehement arguments in favor of adding what would become the Bill of Rights and additional amendments to the Constitution. The amendments to the Constitution of the United States focus much more on personal liberties, freedoms, and rights guaranteed to the citizens of the nation; whereas the body of the Constitution reflects mainly issues such as the structure and function of the federal government, and the system of checks and balances between the judiciary, executive branch, and legislative branch. As Massey (1990) points out, one of the amendments to the Constitution that was particularly antifederalist in tone is the 9th Amendment pointing out the rights of citizens. Massey (1990) notes that the 9th Amendment was so significant as to become entrenched in the individual states' constitutions as well. In essence, the 9th Amendment was an antifederalist response to the federalist body of the Constitution and represents the great tradition of compromise that characterized the decision-making process in American political discourse. For example, James Madison was a federalist who nevertheless sponsored the creation of a Bill of Rights that would answer to the fears held by many antifederalists. Many staunch federalists believed that the Bill of Rights was "unnecessary," (Finkelman, 1990, p. 301). Instead of shutting down the debate in Philadelphia, men like Madison and Dickenson ensured that the concerns and voices of all Americans would be heard and acknowledged.

John Dickinson was "one of the most prominent men in American political life," was well-regarded by his peers and uniquely suited to the challenges of compromise and nation-building (Powell, 1936, p. 2). Interestingly, Dickinson had refused to sign the Declaration of Independence, highlighting the strengths inherent in British parliamentary law and his mistrust of written documents in general (Powell, 1936). Dickinson brought to the table at the Constitutional Convention a sober point-of-view that reconciled the need for libertarianism and flexibility in government structure with the need for strong cohesiveness among the states. According to Gray (1978), the Constitution bears some elements of Aristotlean philosophy and legalism, referring directly to Dickinson's own mistrust of documents. There is a difference between the agreed-upon norms, values, and laws in the nation and the "actual provisions of the written constitution," (Gray, 1978, p. 843). The debate over the contents of the Constitution was underwritten by a more general and existential debate over the relevance of documents to the daily lives of Americans. Antifederalists feared that the document would mean little more than the hemp parchment it was penned upon. A moderate voice reconciling federalism and antifederalism, Dickinson believed that too much localism and also too much trust in a federal government could both lead to ignorance and poor judgment.

Madison, on the other hand, was more interested in proving that a strong federal government would ensure the longevity and solidarity of the union against potential enemies including Great Britain herself. In his Federalist papers and in other political essays, Madison (1787) showed how states had disobeyed the Articles of Confederation and therefore needed a stronger legal bond linking each state to the union. Madison in particular pointed out the system of checks and balances that the Constitution ended up providing, to limit the powers of any one branch of government and theoretically prevent tyranny and oppression (Aboukhadijeh, 2012). For Madison and most other Federalists, too, the strength of the nation would lie in the ability of its citizens to trust the government as being a representative of the people. The people, however, would be deemed only those who were white, male, and generally landowners. It would take heated opposition from the antifederalists to highlight the drawbacks of elitism and classism, which were fallbacks to the Crown mentality. Madison claimed that the Bill of Rights was redundant given the fact that the federal government is not given too many powers at all in the Constitution. Antifederalists countered that without the ability to challenge the federal government, citizens would be stripped of their rights and bereft of the gifts of liberty and freedom they had so valiantly fought for in the war against Great Britain.