FREE ESSAY ON EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD VOTE

EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD VOTE

When the thirteen British colonies in North America declared their independence in 1776,
they laid down that governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed. In so doing they were consciously echoing the words of the
Great Charter which King John had sealed 561 years before, wherein he had undertaken that
no tax may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent. 
Similarly, the federal constitution which the newly independent states drew up in 1787
was to a large extent the formal statement of rights and liberties already won in
Britain. 
However, while England had for centuries been intent on limiting the power of the
absolute monarchy, American constitution-writers now focused on limiting the power and
potential danger of the new absolute ruler - Congress, and the power of federal
government institutions generally. This they sought to achieve not only through
constitutional provisions and the Bill of Rights, but also through the celebrated checks
and balances whereby two Houses, and the President as Executive, exercise discipline and
restraint over one another. The judiciary was also placed to act as a restrictive force;
indeed the US Supreme Court has traditionally seen itself as the ultimate discipline upon
government power, and champion of the citizen against government excesses. 
The supremacy of the constitution over any and all branches of government was seen by
America's Founders as the essential assurance of orderly and disciplined government, a
view clearly described by Mr Hugo LaFayette Black, Associate Justice of the US Supreme
Court, 1937-1971. 
The form of government which was ordained and established in 1789 contains certain unique
features which reflected the Framers' fear of arbitrary government and which clearly
indicate an intention absolutely to limit what Congress could do. 
The first of these features is that our Constitution is written in a single document.
Such constitutions are familiar today and it is not always remembered that our country
was the first to have one. Certainly one purpose of a written constitution is to define
and therefore more specifically limit government powers. An all-powerful government that
can act as it pleases wants no such constitution - unless to fool the people. England had
no written constitution and this once proved a source of tyranny, as our ancestors well
knew. Jefferson said about this departure from the English type of Government: Our
peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a
blank paper by construction. 
A second unique feature of our Government is a Constitution supreme over the Legislature.
In England, statutes, Magna Carta, and later declarations of rights had for centuries
limited the power of the King, but they did not limit the power of parliament. Although
commonly referred to as a constitution, they were never the supreme law of the land in
the way in which our Constitution is, much to the regret of statesmen like Pitt the
elder. Parliament could change this English Constitution; Congress cannot change ours.
Ours can only be changed by amendments ratified by three-fourths of the States. 
A third feature of our Government, expressly designed to limit its powers, was the
division of authority into three co-ordinate branches, none of which was to have
supremacy over the others. This separation of powers with the checks and balances which
each branch was given over the others was designed to prevent any branch, including the
legislative, from infringing individual liberties safeguarded by the Constitution. 
All of the unique features of our Constitution show an underlying purpose to create a new
kind of limited government. 
[Completion of the Constitution was followed shortly after by James Madison's proposed
ten additions or Amendments, these first ten Amendments becoming collectively known as
the Bill of Rights. Mr Justice Black continues:] 
Central to all of the Framers of the Bill of Rights was the idea that since Government,
particularly the national government newly created, is a powerful institution, its
officials - all of them - must be compelled to exercise their powers within strictly
defined boundaries. As Madison told Congress, the Bill of Rights' limitations point
sometimes against the abuse of the Executive power, sometimes against the Legislative,
and in some cases against the community itself; or, in other words, against the majority
in favor of the minority. 
Madison also explained that his proposed amendments were intended to limit and qualify
the powers of Government, by excepting out of the grant of power those cases in which the
Government ought not to act, or to act only in a particular mode. 
Mr. Madison made a clear explanation to Congress that it was the purpose of the First
Amendment to grant greater protection than England afforded its citizens. He said: In the
declaration of rights which [England] has established, the truth is, they have gone no
farther than to raise a barrier against the power of the Crown; the power of the
Legislature is left altogether indefinite. Although I know whenever the great rights, the
trial by jury, freedom of the press, or liberty of conscience, came in question in that
body, invasion of them is resisted by able advocates, yet their Magna Carta does not
contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which the people
of America are most alarmed. The freedom of the press and rights of conscience, those
choicest privileges of the people, are unguarded in the British Constitution. 
It was the desire to give the people of America greater protection against the powerful
Federal Government than the English had had against their government that caused the
Framers to put these freedoms of expression, again in the words of Madison, beyond the
reach of this Government. 
[One Man's Stand For Freedom - Mr. Justice Black and the Bill of Rights - Hugo LaFayette
Black: A collection of his Supreme Court opinions - Published 1963 by Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc.] 
The distinguished group of delegates who assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787 included
many who would be important in the conduct of the new nation's affairs. Among them were
George Washington. James Madison. Edmond Randolph, and George Mason of Virginia; Benjamin
Franklin, James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania: Alexander Hamilton of New
York, John Dickinson of Delaware: and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. 
The Convention had been called for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation,
but the delegates quickly decided to go beyond their mandate and construct an entirely
new constitution. A new government had to be formed that could deal successfully with the
critical issues of finance, commerce and security - a government that, in the words of
James Madison, would achieve a balance between power and liberty. Despite the wide
differences between those with nationalist leanings and those who supported states'
rights, a spirit of compromise ruled, and at length a constitution was hammered out. It
was adopted by the Convention on September 17, 1787. 
After the many debates and writings on individual liberties preceding the Revolution, it
is surprising that the original Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights. The only
provisions reminiscent of the earlier demands for guarantees of rights and liberties are
those of Article I, section 9, denying Congress the power to suspend the writ of habeas
corpus or to pass bills of attainder or ex post facto laws: those of Article III, section
2, providing for jury trial in the federal courts, and section 3, placing limitations on
trials for treason: and that of Article VI, section 3, prohibiting religious tests for
officers. 
The question of including a Bill of Rights was considered during the convention. Charles
Pinckney submitted a list of thirteen propositions on the liberties of the citizen for
consideration, but no action was taken on his proposal. As the final vote on the
Constitution approached, George Mason urged that it be prefaced by a Bill of Rights to
give great quiet to the people. This plea was brushed aside. Many members of the
Convention, particularly the Federalists, believed that such a bill was unnecessary. Its
purpose, they contended, was to protect the subject from tyrannical rulers, and such
provisions had no place in a constitution in which the ultimate power was in the people:
moreover, to specify particular rights was to limit constitutional protection to those
rights only. This was the prevailing view: nevertheless, the omission of a bill of rights
became a rallying point for the Anti-Federalists in the state ratifying conventions. 
The Constitution of 1787 was a practical document aimed at creating a machinery of
government. Inherent in that machinery was protection against arbitrary authority in the
division of power among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The
Constitution represented an experiment in government, and was necessarily written with
little basis in practical experience. Still, in the minds of many of the delegates were
principles of the British constitution, which Pinckney declared to be the best
constitution in existence. Those principles would be evidenced more clearly in the
subsequently enacted Bill of Rights, as well as Constitutions of individual States. 
Most of the original founder-States of the USA had produced their own Constitutions, and
as territories were granted statehood, they too felt the need to set forth the essential
procedures, obligations and limitations controlling the function and laws of their
governments. Right from her very birth, America would espouse and never abandon the
principles of constitutional supremacy and popular participation for which England had
fought so hard and so long. 
Constitutional tradition as it developed in Britain and spread later to America and much
of the Commonwealth was indeed a slow and occasionally violent process. It is a
thousand-year-old story, which may be said to begin in the year 1215 when the Great
Charter sought to limit the powers of an absolute monarch. Yet despite the persistence of
reformers and the progress made at the birth of the United States, the development of
true constitutional security from autocratic rule is by no means complete today. 
Indeed, when one compares the modern government, with its unlimited rights of taxation,
its near-total lack of financial discipline, and the tenuous relationship between elected
Members and their voters, one may reasonably wonder how far real and effective
constitutional discipline over those wielding political power has progressed since the
Great Charter of 1215. 
The need for constitutional discipline over government today is every bit as great as was
the need for constitutional discipline over the monarchy in 1215. It is therefore worth
exploring the theory of constitutional government in more detail.