Advantages Of The Articles Of Confederation

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The Articles of Confederation was the first original constitution of the United States. It was a weak form of a central government. Although there were benefits with the Articles, there were even more problems. Shay’s Rebellion displayed the weaknesses of the Articles by proving to the people that the Articles gave too much power to the states; thus beginning the downfall of the Articles of Confederation and the introduction of the Constitution. The main goal for the Founding Fathers of the new government was to protect the rights of citizens of the United States from a Federal Government that was too weak or too powerful. To do this, they had to limit the powers that the Federal Government could have. The Constitution limits the power of the Federal Government by separation of powers, creating a checks and balances system between government branches, and adding the Bill of Rights to secure freedoms of citizens.…show more content…
To keep the government from becoming too powerful, they created three branches of government and then defined the powers of each branch. The three branches are Legislative, Executive and Judicial (DOC 1). The Legislative Branch makes the laws, the Executive Branch enforces the laws and the Judicial Branch interprets the law. Separation of powers limits the government by making sure that no one branch of government has complete control of America in a way it would be in a monarchy or dictatorship. By creating the three branches of government, the delegates built a "checks and balances" system into the Constitution. With checks and balances, each of the three branches of government can limit the powers of the others. This system was built so that no one branch of our government could become too powerful. Each branch “checks” the power of the other branches to make sure that the power is “balanced” between them

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