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Direct democracy is a government in which the people directly elect their officials, and vote on the laws which govern them. When a nation has a representative democracy, the people’s officials are elected to act in their stead (Text Pg. 24). The politicians are empowered by the people to govern and pass laws. A constitutional democracy is one in that the politicians are representatives of the people (Text Pg. 21). The politicians acknowledge that there are limitations on their power, and that the people are sovereign.
Democracy, as we know it, can be described by four important values. These four values are Personal Liberty, Individualism, Equality, and Opportunity (Text Pg. 25-26). Personal liberty is the freedom of individuals to determine their destinies. The citizen will determine his future, not the state (Text Pg. 25). Individualism is the belief in that everyone is equal in their right to being treated equitably (Text Pg. 25-26). The rights of the many do not outweigh the rights of the few. Equality is the right in which people are treated equally and given the same opportunities as anyone else is given (Text Pg. 26). Opportunity is the chance for everyone to have the chance to further themselves (Text Pg. 26-27). People have the right to their fair chance at succeeding in life, without discrimination. 2.
The Virginia Plan was an argument for an empowered central government with two houses of representation. Voters would elect representatives who would then
Direct democracy can be defined as a system of democracy in which citizens participate in the majority of legislation; therefore, granting them political self-determination. A representative democracy (also indirect democracy) is a form of democracy founded on the principle of elected officials representing a group of people. A direct democracy has leaders that are chosen specifically by “The People”. There is no Electoral College, or elected officials, to cast the votes of the people, the people cast their own direct votes.
The Virginia delegation to the convention put forward a plan (the Virginia Plan) on a new form of government. They suggested a large-state constitutional proposal for a strong congress, which included separate judicial and executive branches with two-chambers. Both arms would be based on numerical representation according to the population in each states. Thus, the more populated states would have higher number of representatives in both chambers than would the lightly populated ones.
Contraceptives are widely used throughout the United States in today’s age and age, but in the early 1950s, Connecticut and Massachusetts were the only states in the union that still had anticontraception policies such as the 1879 Connecticut statute prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives (Johnson 6). Estelle Griswold accepted a job as executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and began a fight to give access for women to use contraceptives legally. It was very predictable the verdicts for the lower court cases during Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) as many judges took the side of the 1879 precedent. However, by the time it reached the Supreme Court, the main issue focused was the right to privacy which
When The United States came into being, the heads of the country made a great deal of emphasis in making sure the country fulfilled one requirement: the United States needed to be the living image of freedom. This image of freedom needed to exist not only as a geographical and political entity, meaning free from the English, but as a society as well, and that is why it opted for a democracy as a system to rule, to let the citizens be able to live freely. Despite the obvious issues presented in the country on that moment that we might call hypocrite, like slavery; the founding fathers knew what they wanted the country to achieve, and laid a great base for getting there, The Bill of Rights, the document that preceded the Constitution in
In the United States, the people matter. They are free, and can control what happens in government. The people have certain rights that allow them to do things that make them people, for example, thinking, speaking, and acting. The Founders of the US wanted to protect people’s basic rights as much as possible through the constitution. The Constitution explains, in great detail, that the people are sovereign.
The Bill of Rights is easily one of the most important sections within constitution, and this is because of the way that it protects the citizens of the United States from the government. One of the items therein the Bill of Rights is the 4th Amendment which states that, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Broken down, this one sentence gives the people the right to be secure and not be violated by the government when it comes to their property, papers and effects. This keeps them from being searched or having items seized without a warrant. This warrant that can be created has to be specific about the places that are going to be searched and the items that will be seized. This article will be divided into multiple sections that overall encompass the meaning of, how it came to be, and why it is important. The importance of this specific amendment is absolutely endless, and without it, our country would not be in the place that it is today.
From the time that the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1787, the definition of the second amendment had remained the same. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected into office and carried a gun rights enthusiast along with him. At the same time a Republican senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, was handed the reigns of chairman of an important sub-committee. Senator hatch stated that he had discovered proof that individual citizens could rightfully own firearms under the second amendment. The National Rifle Association then began biased studies to corroborate with Senator Hatch’s opinion. After many disagreements and debates, Senator Hatch rose victorious.
When the Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution implementing each of the Amendments, it was in hopes of truly making the United States “the land of the free and home of the brave”. This was for everyone including minorities. At the time of making the laws of America, the founding fathers never knew that the overwhelming issues of slavery and unequal rights would have overtaken the United States of America, even so much that it still exists today. Even leaders who also had hopes of seeing equality in America like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Advocates for Women’s Rights to vote risked their lives in hopes of taking America from a one minded country to a fair minded country.
“Under modern Supreme Court jurisprudence, the right to petition, along with the right to peaceable assembly have been almost completely collapsed into Freedom of Speech.” (www.heritage.com). The U.S. Constitution was written as a new set of rules for the nation in place of the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution consists of three parts known as the Preamble, the 7 articles, and the 27 amendments. Of these amendments, the first ten are referred to as the Bill of Rights. “The Bill of Rights sets limitations on the government.” (www.constitutioncenter.org). Our five most important rights are Freedom of Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition, and Religion which are all provided by the First Amendment. To understand Freedom of
The “Move to Amend” organization has put forth a proposed twenty-eighth amendment, that if ratified to the U.S. Constitution would take the constitutional rights away from all artificial entities such as corporations, and limit all campaign expenditures including the candidate 's own contributions and expenditures. The Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasions that according to the fourteenth amendment corporations are individuals that have constitutional rights. If corporations have the same rights as individuals, then under the first amendment they have the right to spend their money on political campaigns as they choose. I am against both parts of this proposed twenty-eighth amendment, the Supreme Court has already set precedence and I believe that the addition of this amendment would directly contradict the first amendment since political speech is at the core of the first amendment. If you set limits on campaign expenditures, you are limiting someone’s ability to effectively campaign and get their message out. If a corporation chooses to spend large sums of money on political advertising then that is their choice, most people don’t want to be told how they can spend their money and neither do corporations.
Every year people from all over the world come to the United States for a myriad of reasons. Some to seek employment, some education, and others to seek safe haven from violence and oppression from foreign governments. Regardless of the reason, the beauty of the United States is that the protections afforded by the constitution apply to anyone within its territory. However, since the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11, 2001, the protections of the constitution have since become a blurred line. Legislation such as the Patriot Act, and methods in which law enforcement conduct operations to combat terrorism have pushed the limits of the constitution. Finding the balance of working within the confines of the constitution is a constant challenge. The growing challenge elicits the potential for legal, policy and ethical issues, which ultimately undermine the very purpose of what the constitution is intended to protect.
The Bill of Rights is a historical documents that has the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. The purpose of the Bill of Rights is for greater constitutional protection for our own individual liberties. It has a list of specific prohibitions on government power. There were only 12 amendments originally for the state legislatures and only picked 10 for all the states and those are known as the Bill of Rights, but there are 27 amendments in total. Amendments 3 through 12 were adopted by the United States to become the United States (US BILL OF RIGHTS) and were written down on December 15, 1791. James Madison was the one who wrote the Bill of Rights and there were 56 people to sign for approval.
In the United States, citizens have rights, and the United States Constitution guarantees these rights. The Bill of Rights states the basic liberties of the people of this nation in the first ten amendments in the U.S. Constitution. However, these liberties can be met with denied liberty, while sacrificing freedom, as people live in fear threatened by racism, religious beliefs, police brutality, invasion of privacy, and the horrific terrorism acts on United States soil.
The first step towards ensuring their freedom was to establish how the states would be represented in the new Federal government. Some form of elected or chosen representation was needed to ensure that the states would have a direct hand in determining the laws of the new country. The original plan proposed by Virginia