The Democracy Of Ancient Greece And Greek Democracy

The structure of our American Government was founded in the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was written to be the “supreme law of the land,” and produces a democratic republic, where citizens govern themselves (Our American Government, n.d). The purpose of our government, is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” (Our American Government, n.d.). For our country to accomplish this purpose our Founding Fathers created three principles, “inherent rights, self-government, and separation of powers” (Our American Government, n.d.). The government was developed to ensure order in society and protect its citizens, but with all systems, there is strengths and weakness, let’s examine those strengths and weakness. Let’s first look at the strength and weakness of the U.S. Constitution.

The Greeks where the first democracy in the world. There government was made up of six thousand members all of witch where male citizens. They voted on problems that needed to be solved and if a law was to pass a majority vote was needed. Now in the United States also has a democracy. Instead of having six thousand people voting and making the decisions all the people vote on a representative that makes the decisions in the country.

The structure of our American Government, was founded in the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was written to be the “supreme law of the land”, and creates a federal democratic republic, where citizens govern themselves (Our American Governement, n.d). The purpose of our government, is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” (Our American Government, n.d.). For our country to achieve this purpose our Founding Fathers created three main principles, “inherent rights, self-government, and separation of powers” (Our American Government, n.d.). Government was developed to ensure order in society and protect its citizens, but with all systems there are strengths and weakness, let’s examine those strengths and weakness. Let’s first look at the strength and weakness of the U.S. Constitution.

The purpose of a government is to enforce laws and protect individual rights of citizens. In the process of creating a government, the U.S Constitution was formed and signed on September 17, 1787, which gave American citizens rights of their own and the fundamental set of laws to obey by. Three major principles governed the constitution, checks & balances, rule of law and individual rights. In the constructions of the Constitution, the founding fathers relied heavily upon a variety of principles to create a form of government that was intended to balance government power and individual rights.

The U.S. Constitution states fundamental principles which guide the United States’ Government and its laws. When it was written in 1787, it was the plan that told the commencing country how to form its government.

Our founding fathers came up with the United States Constitution to solve many of the problems with the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution is one big compromise that the government made for its people. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788. It consists of seven Articles and twenty-seven Amendments. The Articles and Amendments solved problems like: government powers, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, the right to bear arms, taxes.

Again “judicial review is the power of a court to review the actions of executive or legislative bodies to determine whether the action is consistent with statue, a treaty or the U.S. Constitution” (Cobb, 2007). Supporters like Blackstone and Hamilton favored this because it protects individuals from other branches becoming too powerful. The Judiciary Act was passed in 1789 and consist of 37 sections for the lower federal courts and their details and consist of judicial review (The Judiciary Act 1789). Marbury v. Madison (1803) was The Supreme Court’s first time judicial review was used to show that the act of Congress was unconstitutional. (Marbury v. Madison, 1803).

The Constitution of the United States took many years of controversy to establish. The final Constitution set up a government based on the system of checks and balances. This Constitution consists of three branches, the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. Powers given to each branch help keep any individual branch from taking over.

These Greek poleis operated under many forms of government. Whenever there was violent political upheaval, it almost always ended up with tyranny. Not all tyrants were oppressive though. In fact, some used their total power to help the common citizen. Democracy in greece applied to citizens.

This history of Democracy starts in Athens Greece in the 5th century. This was widely immitated at

To begin with, the political ideas born in Greece can still be found in most countries of today. All modern governments can be roughly categorized into three types - democracy, oligarchy and the hybrid of the two. In Greece, Athens and Sparta, the two most influential city-states, respectively had a system of democracy and oligarchy. It was Athenians who invented the word “democracy” (Greek: δημοκρατία),

The Greek city state of Athens was the first civilization to elected its political leaders and officials by popular vote. In this way, it was the first Western Democracy, started around 630 B.C. The traits of which can be found in today’s democracies. Those traits are: electoral districts, the freedom of the people, and a well-defined structure.

When Greece fell the Romans copied the methods of the Greeks. Architecture was big aspect that they shared. Both cultures used three different columns in temple building. The Doric is thick and with very little decoration. The Ionic is a thinner slightly more ornate column.

The fall democracy in ancient Greece started as an external aggression, in Athens people used to vote against their democratic constitution. Another of the reasons of the fallen democracy in Greece were because of Plato and Aristotle and it was because this two great philosophers used their works to discredit the Periclean democratically practices. The end of the war between the Persians and the Greeks marked the easement into the Classical period. Greece then became a part of the Roman Empire, this period was a period of transformation to the Greek society. During this era there was an increase on their population and a more urban lifestyle emerged which brought the cities to overcrowd. After all this movements the Greeks were forced to move to new lands in the east

Ancient Greeks like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are often associated with democracy. These popular Greek thinkers were also unapologetically elitist. All of their theories of human nature were less than flattering. Each philosopher strongly criticized democracy. They claimed government was inherently corrupt and inefficient. Along with Rome, Ancient Greece is often heralded as a bastion of democracy. The government of Athens was supposedly a precursor to the governments we practice today. The American framers, we are wantonly informed, were heavily influenced by Greek democratic ideals. To some extent, this is true; but the most prominent Greek thinkers—the ones most of us are still familiar with today—actually strongly disliked democracy.