Question

(fourth) Assignment/question
Assignment: Influences on Constitution
Define each of the following and briefly explain how each is related or a part of the United States Constitution:

Magna Carta
Mayflower Compact
Articles of Confederation
English Bill of Rights
U.S. Bill of Rights

Answer 1

For seven centuries Magna Carta has exerted a powerful influence upon constitutional and legal development. During the first four centuries after 1215 this influence was confined to England and the British Isles. With the growth of the British Empire during the last three hundred years, the principles of the Charter have spread to many of the political communities which have derived their constitutional and legal systems from England, and which have owed in the past, or which still owe, allegiance to the mother-country. The earliest, and perhaps the most important phase of this imperial history of Magna Carta is its effect upon the constitutions and laws of the American colonies and of the Federal Union that was established after their War of Independence.

Answer 2

thx!

Answer 3

William Bradford wrote the Mayflower Compact while the Mayflower was anchored at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In this document, the passengers declared their intention to start the “first colony in the northern parts of Virginia.” They stated that they had now covenanted and combined themselves into a society for their “better Ordering and Preservation.” They pledged to institute “just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices… as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.” Forty-one of the 102 passengers signed the Mayflower Compact.

Answer 4

The first constitution in our nation's history was the U.S. Articles of Confederation. Under the U.S. Articles of Confederation we took "baby steps" as a nation. The government conducted the affairs of the country during the last two years of the Revolutionary War, helped to negotiate the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and produced two monumental pieces of legislation in the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Answer 5

The English Bill of Rights was enacted by the English Parliament and singed into law by King William III in 1689. It is one of the fundamental documents of English constitutional law, and marks a fundamental milestone in the progression of English society from a nation of subjects under the plenary authority of a monarch to a nation of free citizens with inalienable rights. This process was a gradual evolution beginning with the Magna Charta in 1215 and advancing intermittently as subsequent monarchs were compelled to recognize limitations on their power.

Answer 6

The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed to assuage the fears of Anti-Federalists who had opposed Constitutional ratification, these amendments guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. Originally the amendments applied only to the federal government, however, most were subsequently applied to the government of each state by way of the Fourteenth Amendment, through a process known as incorporation.

Answer 7

ok not it is done

Answer 8

now it is done

Answer 9

Ok! thank you!

Answer 10

what is the next one

Answer 11

The next one is: What were the differing views of the Founding Fathers regarding the separation of church and state? @goalieboy101

Answer 12

The term "separation of church and state" was never used by the founding fathers. The constitution only established that they did not want a nationally sponsored religion as was done in England with the Church of England. The constitution specified that congress could not establish a national religion nor could it prohibit the free exercise of religion. Somehow the Leftists of this nation have decided that there should be a "separation of church and state" and that they could use that term to justify a national religon of athiesm. Athiesm is now the national religion and the mention of God at any event or in any building that has any connection to the government is now illegal. The original congress offered non-denominational prayer at the beginning of every session and put "In God We Trust" on the money. That should pretty much clear up any question of whether the original congress believed that God had any place in government.

Answer 13

Thanks!

Answer 14

there you go

Answer 15

how you doing

Answer 16

im good, im getting close to done, but not quite... ive got another, just a sec

Answer 17

Identify at least 4 events or policies that contributed to the rising tensions between Britain and the colonies.

Answer 18

I will answer this one and than the rest when I get home does that sound good

Answer 19

yea! thx!

Answer 20

June 13
Thomas Hutchinson, royal governor of Massachusetts, announces that he will henceforth be paid by the crown, instead of by the colonists; Massachusetts judges follow suit in September
This declaration did not represent the first clash between Massachusetts' governor and her House of Representatives. In 1769, armed with a royal instruction, Hutchinson had transferred the meeting place of Massachusett's General Court to Cambridge, hoping to remove the court from the influence of the more radical patriots in Boston, the court's lawful place of meeting. In 1770, Hutchinson further angered colonists when, again acting with royal sanction, he replaced the garrison of colonial troops at Castle William with British soldiers, and relinquished the small fort, located on an island in Boston Harbor, to British control.

But it was his pronouncement in the summer of 1772 that aroused the greatest protest. Henceforth the imperial government, and not the colonists, would hold the means of accountability intrinsic to control of the salaries of Massachusetts governor and judges. To the colonists it was clear: it was the plan of the imperial government to remove both the executive and judiciary branches of the colony out from under the influence of the legislative branch (which contained the representatives of the people), and into the pocket of the crown.
Bios
November 2
The first Committee of Correspondence is formed in Boston, and produces Samuel Adams’ bold assertion of the “Rights of the Colonists,” and Dr. Joseph Warren’s “List of Infringements and Violations of Rights.”
Colonial response to Governor Hutchinson's declaration was swift, and not surprisingly, it was led by patriot Samuel Adams. At a Boston town meeting on November 2, 1772, at Adam's suggestion, a standing Committee of Correspondence was appointed for the purpose of writing a declaration of colonial grievances and an assertion of their rights. Adams' "Rights of the Colonists" and Dr. Joseph Warren's "List of Infringements and Violations of Rights" were transmitted to other Massachusetts towns, and soon more Committees of Correspondence sprang up. With each new committee came new declarations, invariably denying the authority of Parliament over the colonies.

The system of committees would later spread throughout the colonies during the inquiry into the burning of the British schooner Gaspee, due to colonial concerns that the commission investigating the incident was empowered to remove suspects to Britain for trial.

The committees resembled the Sons of Liberty, first organized in 1765, which had arisen in response to the Stamp Act Crisis. But whereas the Sons of Liberty had been extralegal, the committees would operate under the sanction of town meetings. With the Committees of Correspondence, the organized political machinery for revolution was being assembled.
Bios
1773
January 6
Massachusetts’ Governor Hutchinson argues the supremacy of Parliament before the General Court.
Dismayed at the daring refutations of Parliament's authority springing up in his colony, Governor Hutchinson undertook a speech to the General Court, in which he argued that because sovereignty cannot be divided, Parliament's authority in the colonies could not be shared with the state legislatures. There were but two alternatives: either Parliament was supreme, or the colonies were independent entities.

Hutchinson's strategy backfired; his listeners favored the latter alternative. The House of Representatives issued a reply to his speech, prepared in part by John Adams, making the most explicit and comprehensive claim to exemption from parliamentary authority that had yet been seen. Now not only the Committees of Correspondence had taken a stand against Parliamentary control, but Hutchinson had provoked the colonial legislature into adopting the same public stance.

Massachusetts had led the way with breathtaking boldness. It would be months before another declaration of this kind would be elicited from any of the other colonies.
May 10
With the passage of the Tea Act, the East India Company is granted a virtual monopoly on the tea trade in the colonies.
Parliament passed the Tea Act to enable the East India Company, which was in financial straits and on the verge of bankruptcy, to sell a portion of its huge surplus of tea in America at prices that undersold all other merchants. It was not intended to punish the colonies but to help the East India Company. This did not matter much to the colonists, who regarded the Tea Act as a clever way for Parliament to impose its will upon the merchants in the colonies. If Parliament could grant a monopoly to a particular company for the colonial market on tea, why could it not do the same with other commodities, to the detriment of colonial merchants?

Answer 21

there you go

Answer 22

thx!