The original Constitution nonetheless had a limited, implicit bill of rights in the form of Article I, section 10, which explicitly restricted the states from a variety of activities, especially those which threatened private property or entailed conducting foreign policy. Moreover, it forbade states from passing laws inconsistent with those passed by Congress pursuant to the Constitution.
The experience of slavery and its aftermath, however, showed that states required additional restrictions to ensure the protection of basic rights and civil liberties. The Fourteenth Amendment aimed to correct these injustices. This amendment guaranteed citizenship to black Americans overturning the Dred Scott decision , constitutionalized the Civil Rights Act of and its effort to ban black codes, and ensured the equal protection of the laws.
Yet due to a complicated set of historical contingencies, the U. New York, the Supreme Court claimed authority to review state laws that prohibited the publication of seditious materials.
While it ultimately upheld New York's conviction, in reviewing the case, it applied First Amendment free speech protections to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment did not aim to eliminate the American system of federalism, but it did insist on a basic floor of rights that the states must honor.
The height of that floor quickly became, and has since remained, a source of intense debate. As the Supreme Court has continued to guarantee these fundamental rights against states, interest in state constitutions has faded. Even a quick read reveals that state constitutions contain many clauses that are duplicated in the federal text, such as freedom of speech.
Prior to incorporation of the federal Bill of Rights against the states, this duplication in state constitutions was necessary if citizens wished to prohibit state action. Now, the relevance of state constitutions is not as obvious and indeed is sometimes questioned. For example, unlike the text of the federal Constitution, the Arizona Constitution is far clearer in describing what constitutes an establishment of religion and thus specifically prohibiting certain entanglements between church and state.
Similarly, where the U. Supreme Court has concluded the federal Constitution leaves state governments discretion to act, state constitutions allow citizens to remove that discretion and instead guarantee the individual rights demanded by their citizens. Thus in the case of Kelo v. The opinion was widely criticized, with some arguing the opinion, while consistent with recent precedents, did not faithfully apply the original meaning of the Constitution. Others believed the result was unjust and biased against the poor, to favor corporations.
As they have done for over years, citizens made a choice in how they wished to govern themselves, and they turned to the state constitution to make that choice. They appealed for reforming the governmental structure and establishing a stronger central government. This idea was embodied in the U. Constitution: The powers of the national government and the states were divided. The central government was specifically granted certain important powers while the power of the state governments was limited, and there were certain powers that they shared.
All those powers granted to the Federal Government by the U. Constitution are enumerated principally as powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8. These powers can be classified as either economic or military.
As is known to all, economic and military power are fundamental and essential to a government. Possessing such powers, the U. Economic powers delegated to the Federal Government include the authority to levy taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, and establish bankruptcy laws. The stipulation about commerce regulation won strongest support from big cities and centers of manufacturing industry and commerce, such as New York, Philadelphia and Boston, because they knew that the regulation of the central government would be quite helpful for the sale of their products.
Alexander Hamilton, one of the most active representatives in the Constitutional Convention, pointed out that free trade in the whole nation was very profitable for any kind of business.
For example, when the local market was weakened, the markets in other states and areas of the country would support the sale of the producers, thus their business could keep developing. Hamilton concluded that any farsighted businessman would see the power of the unity of the country, that they would find the unity of the whole nation would be much better than the separation of the thirteen states.
Power to Declare War Certain military powers granted to the Federal Government involve declaring war, raising and supporting armies, regulating and maintaining navies, and calling forth the militia. The framers of the U.
Constitution regarded the military power of the Federal Government as a tool to protect the domestic interests of their country from foreign invasion. Most representatives in the Constitutional Convention had realized that when the United States broke up, it would easily become a sacrifice to its neighboring and enemy states.
They saw that other countries still threatened the security of the United States. The Great Britain was unwilling to secede from America and kept military bases in the Northwest boundary of the United States.
At the same time, France blockaded some important river mouths so that it could monopolize the market, and Spain also tried to blockade the Mississippi River. The European powers did not want the United States to develop into a powerful nation, or to share their market, neither in the United States itself nor abroad.
Constitution fully realized that a strong navy and land force could become not only a tool to protect the interests of the United States, but also a tool to force other countries to open their markets.
A strong army would definitely make the European countries respect their country. Apart from the foreign troubles, the leaders of the United States had also seen the serious influences of clashes between different classes. They believed that in time of trouble, a strong army would be decisive.
They degrade under the human standard when the political situation remains steady; but when the society is in chaos, they would provide their fellow people with a great force. The U. Constitution grants so many specific powers to the Federal Government, at the same time, lists a rather large number of things that the Federal Government is not allowed to do. Evidently, the framers were afraid that too strong a central government would easily bring about autocracy.
In order to restrict the authority of the central government, the framers wanted to make it clear in the Constitution that certain powers were emphatically denied to the Federal Government. Restrictions of the powers of the Federal Government are listed below: No exercise of powers not delegated to it by the Constitution.
No payment from the Treasury except under appropriations made by law. All duties and excises must be uniform throughout the United States. No tax or duty to be laid on articles exported from any state. No appointment of a senator or representative to any civil office which was created while he was a member of Congress or for which the amount of compensation was increased during that period. No preferences to the ports of one state over another in regulation or tax collection.
No titles of nobility to be granted by the U. In the vast majority of states, constitutional framers have attempted to outlaw subsidies through constitutional constraints known as anti-aid clauses.
These constraints have been weakened over the decades, and history shows that they need to be renewed and strengthened from time to time. If properly structured, however, these provisions can constrain the size and character of subsidies. But the details matter. The most effective anti-aid provisions encompass all varieties of aid, apply to both the state government and political subdivisions, and are as widely applicable as possible by applying to revenue bonds, industrial development bonds, and special districts.
Moreover, the most effective provisions are supported by legal tests that require expenditures to serve a public purpose, to be under government control, and to be supported by valid consideration. Each week, we will send you the latest in publications, media, and events featuring Mercatus research and scholars. Skip to main content. Sparking New Thinking Read Discourse magazine Online journal dedicated to promoting and defending classical liberal values with new and innovative thinking.
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Public Spending on Private Ventures This situation began to change in the s as state governments sought to stimulate their economies with increasing levels of state spending on private ventures. Restraining Localities This first wave of anti-aid provisions did not always apply to localities, however. The Effects of Anti-Aid Provisions For the next half century, the courts actively reined in governments that overstepped the bounds of established anti-aid provisions. While it is impossible to determine a causal relationship, the provisions did coincide with improved outcomes: The financial footing of government grew stronger.
By , combined state and local debt stood at a smaller share of national income than at any point since the crisis of the early s. As their fiscal positions improved, municipalities found themselves facing lower borrowing costs. As state and local governments curtailed their use of targeted economic development subsidies, the US economy entered a period of prolonged and robust economic expansion. Current Anti-Aid Provisions in the States Forty-five states currently have constitutional anti-aid provisions.
Toward a Model Anti-Subsidy Clause In recent years, there has been a revival in the strength of anti-aid provisions. Recently economic historians have begun to reexamine the behavior of our Founding Fathers concerning the Constitution. This reexamination, which employs formal economics and modern statistical techniques, involves the application of an economic model of voting behavior during the drafting and ratification processes and the collection and processing of large amounts of data on the economic and financial interests and other characteristics of the men who drafted and ratified the Constitution.
The findings of this reexamination, which have become the accepted view among quantitative economic historians today Robert Whaples, , provide answers to many heretofore-unresolved issues involving the adoption of the Constitution.
Why did they include a prohibition on state paper-money issues in the Constitution? Why did they decide to allow for duties taxes on imports but not on exports? Why did they fail to adopt a clause giving the national government an absolute veto over state laws? Were the economic, financial, and other interests of the founders significant factors in their support for the Constitution, or their support for specific clauses in it, or their support for ratification?
Were, for example, the slaveholdings of the founders a significant factor in their behavior? Were the private or public securities holdings significant factors? The critical reexamination of the adoption of the Constitution, which began in the mids Robert A. McGuire and Robert L. Ohsfeldt, , offers an economic model of the founders that is based on rational choice and methodological individualism, and employs formal statistical techniques.
Methodologically, such an approach analyzes the choices of the individuals involved in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. The object of analysis is the behavior of the individual Founding Fathers not the behavior of some social class or group. The economic model presumes that a founder was motivated by self-interest to maximize the satisfaction he received from the choices he made at the constitutional convention attended. But neither self-interest nor economic rationality implies that a founder was concerned only with his financial or material well-being.
The economic model indicates that a founder weighed the benefits the satisfaction and the costs the sacrifice to himself of his actions, making those choices that were in his self-interest, broadly defined to include any pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits and costs of his choices.
This is the presumption of rational choice. More precisely, the economic model is that a founder acted individually to maximize the net benefit he received from his votes.
A founder would have voted in favor of a particular issue at Philadelphia, or in favor of ratification, if he expected the net benefit he would receive would have been greater if the issue, or the Constitution, was adopted.
Because a founder was from a particular state or locality, the founder represented the citizens the constituents of the state or locality in which he resided as well as represented his own personal interests at Philadelphia or a ratifying convention. The interests may have been purely economic pecuniary interests, such as the ownership or value of specific economic assets or ideological non-pecuniary interests, such as beliefs about the moral correctness of a particular form of government.
The statistical technique employed is called multivariate logistic regression. The estimated logistic regression produces for each explanatory variable an estimated coefficient that captures the influence its direction and magnitude of the explanatory variable on the probability of a founder voting in favor of the issue being estimated, holding the influence of all other explanatory variables constant.
The benefit of this approach is that each potential factor, each explanatory variable, affecting a vote is examined separately from the influence of the other factors, while at the same time, controlling for the influence of the other factors. This reduces to a minimum the incidence of spurious relationships between any particular factor and a vote. The issues, in fact, have not been heretofore tested.
Earlier historical studies did not have the benefit of modern economic methodology and systematic statistical analysis. As such, their conclusions cannot pass scientific scrutiny. Major advances in both economic thinking about political behavior and statistical techniques have taken place in the last thirty or so years.
These modern methods allow for a systematic quantitative analysis of the voting behavior of the founders employing, among other data and evidence, the types of non-quantitative data about the founders that historians collected decades ago but never systematically analyzed.
They failed to systematically analyze such data and evidence because the necessary techniques did not exist and because they generally were not trained in quantitative analysis. One unambiguous conclusion can be drawn from the recent quantitative studies: There is a valid economic interpretation of the Constitution.
The idea of self-interest can explain the design and adoption of the Constitution. Nor does it mean that the founders were completely selfish in a purely financial or material sense. See McGuire The fifty-five delegates to the Philadelphia convention that drafted the Constitution during the summer of were motivated by self-interest, in a broad sense, in choosing its design. Quantitative research suggests that these framers of the Constitution can be seen as rational individuals who were making choices in designing the fundamental rules of governance for the nation.
In doing so, they rationally weighed the expected costs and benefits of each clause they considered. They included a particular clause in the Constitution only if they expected the benefits from its inclusion to exceed the costs they expected to result from inclusion.
Likewise, the more than 1, delegates who participated in the thirteen state ratifying conventions, which took place between and to consider adopting the Constitution, can be viewed as rational individuals who were making the choice to adopt the set of rules embodied in the Constitution as drafted at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention.
In doing so, they rationally weighed the expected costs and benefits of their decision to ratify. They voted to ratify only if the benefits they expected from adoption of the set of rules embodied in the Constitution exceeded the costs they expected to result from that set of rules.
If not, they voted against ratification. When specific issues arose at the Philadelphia convention that had a direct impact on important economic interests of the founders, their economic interests, even narrowly defined, significantly influenced the specific design of the Constitution, and the magnitudes of the influences were often quite large.
The types of economic interests that mattered for the choice of specific issues were those that were likely to have accounted for a substantial portion of the overall wealth or represent the primary livelihood of the founders. Even when the founders were deciding on the general issue of the basic design of the Constitution to strengthen the national government, economic and other interests significantly influenced them.
The financial securities holdings of the founders often had a significantly large influence on their behavior and founders with such financial assets were often aligned with each other on the same issue.
Moreover, during the ratification process, the financial securities holdings had a major influence. Specifically, delegates with private securities holdings private creditors or public securities holdings public creditors , and especially delegates with large amounts of public securities holdings generally, Revolutionary War debt , were significantly more likely to vote in favor of ratification.
This does not mean that all securities-holding delegates voted together at the constitutional conventions. What it does mean is that the holdings of financial securities, controlling for other influences, significantly increased the probability of supporting some of the issues at the Philadelphia convention, particularly those issues that strengthened the central government or weakened the state governments.
For example, one issue that the securities holders were more likely to have supported was a proposal to absolutely prohibit state governments from issuing paper money.
Not surprisingly, the twelve founders at Philadelphia with private securities holdings voted unanimously in favor of the prohibition. Likewise, those with public securities holdings were significantly more likely to have favored it. The evidence indicates that a founder at Philadelphia with any public securities holdings, who at the same time possessed the average values of all other interests represented at the convention, was The view of many historical scholars is that delegates who were slaveowners and those who represented slave areas generally supported strengthening the central government and supported ratifying the Constitution.
While this may be correct as far as it goes, the issue of the influence of slaveholdings on the behavior of the Founding Fathers, as is the influence of any factor, is actually more complex. As with the findings for financial securities holdings, this does not mean that all slaveholding delegates or all delegates from slave areas voted together at the various constitutional conventions. What it does mean for the Philadelphia constitutional convention is that slaveholdings, controlling for other influences, decreased the probability of voting at the convention for issues that would have strengthened the central government.
For example, one issue that slaveholders at Philadelphia were less likely to have supported was a proposal that would have given the national legislature an absolute veto over state laws, which would have greatly strengthened the central government. This means that if the national veto had been put into the Constitution at Philadelphia, which it was not, the national Congress, especially if it had a majority of non-slaveholding representatives, could have vetoed state laws concerning slavery, for example.
This would have given the national Congress the power to limit the economic viability of slavery, if it so chose. Not surprisingly, the evidence suggests that a delegate at Philadelphia who owned the most slaves at the convention, for example, and had average values of all other interests, was one-twelfth as likely to have voted yes on the national veto than an otherwise average delegate with no slaveholdings.
Likewise, during the ratification process, slaveholdings, controlling for other influences, significantly decreased the probability of voting in favor of ratification at the state ratifying conventions. The modern evidence confirms that the framers and the ratifiers of the Constitution, who were from the more commercial areas of their states, were likely to have voted differently from individuals from the less commercial areas.
Delegates who were from the more commercial areas were significantly more likely to have voted for clauses in the Constitution that strengthened the central government and were significantly more likely to have voted for ratification in the ratifying conventions.
The Founding Fathers who were from the more isolated, less commercial areas of their states were significantly less likely to support strengthening the central government and significantly less likely to vote for ratification.
The modern quantitative evidence, in fact, indicates that there were no significant relationships whatsoever between any measure of local or state office holding and the ratification vote in any ratifying convention for which the data on officeholders were collected. One of the more important findings of the modern approach to the adoption of the Constitution is that it makes evident the importance to historical outcomes of the specific individuals involved in any historical process.
The modern evidence attests to the paramount importance of the specific political actors involved in the American constitutional founding. For example, had all the founders at Philadelphia represented a state with a population the size of the most populous state, and possessed the average values of all other interests represented at Philadelphia, the Constitution most certainly would have contained a clause giving the national government an absolute veto over all state laws.
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