Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Getting it Done - How Long Does it Take to Write a Constitution?

Judging by a lot of the headlines lately, you'd think that writing a Constitution was an easy thing to do; that the fact that Iraq's taken a little while to get it done is a sign of significant trouble, even a sign that we're losing.

I wonder if any of these critics ever read a history book. If you know anything about American history, you'll recall that it took our founding fathers quite a while to write the document that guides this country. It wasn't done in a civil afternoon of tea and quiet conversation. The differences that divided the northern and southern states, which very nearly killed the idea of American independence, raised their heads again when it came time to discuss a constitution, and the small and large states ended up at each other's throats. (Kind of reminds you of that Sunni and Shi'ite rift, doesn't it?)

Here's some info on exactly how the process of writing our Constitution went:

The Articles of Confederation came out first - they were ratified in 1781. But there were some MAJOR issues there - Congress couldn't enforce its own legislation. The new government didn't have any means of getting any money - it could make requisitions on the States, but couldn't enforce compliance. The States could - and did - completely ignore requests for funds. Congress had no authority to enforce any control over interstate or international commerce. It had no ability to compel States to honor national commitments - like treaties, for instance. And the Articles really had no impact on individual citizens - they only affected "the States."

The economy was in complete disarray, and radical political movements, like Shays' Rebellion, sprang up. States had their own money, their own tax systems, and nobody was having any luck making stable trade agreements. Even navigation on the Potomac was a major snafu - Virginia found that it couldn't make any deals without getting Delaware and Pennsylvania to agree. A general conference on commercial issues was called to address some of these problems, but only five states sent delegates.

In short, things were a complete mess.

Finally, everybody figured out that the Articles just weren't going to work without one serious rewrite. They needed a strong federal government, and they needed it in writing. A general convention to revise the Articles was called for May, 1787, in Philadelphia. Congress didn't give it the official nod until five states had already selected their delegates.

Rhode Island was the only state who didn't send a delegate to the Convention...eventually. When things first opened on May 14, only two states were represented. The Convention had to keep adjourning until they finally got a quorum almost two weeks later. Washington presided, elected unanimously. Immediately, conflict flared up. Everyone agreed that Congress should have the ability to be effective, but how that was to happen was a matter of intense debate. By the middle of June, it was pretty clear that no amount of amending was going to do it - they needed to scrap the Articles entirely, and draw up a whole new document.

The process was daunting - from the beginning, no one could agree on exactly how that newly defined government should look. Smaller states wanted to retain equal power. Larger states wanted population to dictate power. And neither side was going to budge. Edmund Randolph of Virginia came up with a solution - two houses. One, the lower house, with delegates according to population, and the other, the upper house, elected by the lower house. William Patterson of New Jersey offered a plan that called for equal representation. Neither side of the argument would yield, and the small states threatened to walk out altogether. Finally, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman (CT), put forth a compromise measure that resulted in our present system.

Other issues were how taxes would be allotted (Congress would be able to levy direct, but not indirect, taxes), and the abolition of importing slaves (a hot issue in the independence discussion, too - they finally agreed that importation would not be forbidden before 1808)

But the feuding didn't end there - some delegates finally did walk out, leading the fight to stop ratification of the document. In the end, only thirty-nine delegates signed. Fourteen had gone home. Three delegates flat-out refused to sign. And one who did sign, did so by proxy.

All told, it took a little over three months to draft the 4,543 words that comprise the Constitution (including signatures, but not interlineations certificate). Really, though, it took 12 years from the point of declaring we were our own country to get to the point of having a signed document with which to run it.

It wasn't until June of 1788 that the darned thing was finally ratified (after 124 changes) - and only after North Carolina and Rhode Island, who'd rejected it, were forced to sign on after everyone else accepted. Even then, not everybody was happy with it. In the first two years after the signatures, the Bill of Rights was added. And the sucker's been amended twenty-seven times - the last occurring in 1992 (by the way, that one - establishing procedures for Congressional pay raises, was first proposed in 1789).

Iraq held elections at the end of January, 2005. So why is it that we're so completely stunned that they haven't got a perfect constitution in seven months? It took us seven years of war and five years of arguing to come up with a completely useless document that in the end had to be scrapped anyway. It's taken us over two hundred years to get it the way it looks now, and there's no guarantee we won't change it some more. In comparison, the way I see it, the Iraqis are way ahead of us on Constitution drafting. And the arguing is just part of the process of defining who they will be as a country.

For more information:
The National Archives - The Constitution of the United States
The National Archives - A More Perfect Union:The Creation of the U.S. Constitution
USConstitution.net
Yahoo! - The Constitution of the United States

posted by Pam @ 4:55 PM |

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