history question?

Question

What issues were not resolved during the Constitutional Convention? What issues were resolved?

Answer 1

1. The rule of secrecy was adopted, and, for the most part, it was adhered to.

2. The Virginia Plan, The New Jersey Plan and the Hamilton Plan (all of which dealt with how the people would be represented in Congress) were all defeated and the Connecticut Comprise (equal representation in the Senate for states; representation based on population in the House) carried the day.

3. The "Necessary and Proper" clause -
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
was added to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

4. A compromise -
"On August 25, the delegates received a Committee compromise recommendation to permit Congress to prohibit the slave trade in 1800. Pinckney moved to alter this to 1808. Madison's response was prophetic: "twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves." The first time the slavery issue was raised in the convention is by Madison on June 6. There in his itemization of the causes of faction, or the unjust use of power, he says "that we have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man." G. Morris from Pennsylvania, on August 25, was rather blunt: why not say that this part of the Constitution was a compliance with… North Carolina, South Carolina & Georgia."

The delegates agreed to the 1808 prohibition by a vote of Ayes 7, Noes 4. The 4 noes were New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia and they voted "no" because they thought that 1808 was too compromising. Lincoln, and not Taney, has the weight of the Founders on his side of the argument."

was reached on the question of the Slave Trade.

5. The Electoral Coolege was established:
"To summarize, the Brearly Committee, composed of Gilman, King, Sherman, Brearly, G. Morris, Dickinson, Carroll, Madison, Williamson, Butler, and Baldwin—a veritable cross-section of the delegates—proposed the adoption of an Electoral College in which both the people and the States are represented in the election of the President. This resolution of the difficult matter of Presidential election clearly meant that the partly national -partly federal model had become the deliberate sense of the convention. This structural compromise—Congress is partly federal and partly national—became the deliberate sense of the community by the end of the Convention. It is the model to which the delegates returned for the resolution of the most durable of issues, namely, the election of the President."

6. The concept of Judical Review and the extent of Judical Powers were outlined:
"It is often remarked by judicial scholars that Article III of the Constitution makes no mention of judicial review. This is true. So, the presumption is that the Framers didn't intend to establish judicial review otherwise they would have put it in the Constitution. Thus the question, where and when did judicial review make its appearance in our constitutional heritage? The conventional answer is that John Marshall, in Marbury v Madison, 1803, established judicial review. But if we need to find the exact words "judicial review," to establish judicial review, then the Marbury case isn't good enough because the phrase doesn't occur there either. The phrase "judicial review" does not make its appearance until the 1880s and then in a law review article by Edwin Corwin.

The evidence suggests that the Framers recognized what we now call judicial review, but were serious about the distinction between policy and constitutional review.

On August 27, Johnson moved to "insert the words 'this Constitution and the' before the word 'laws.'"

Mr. Madison doubted whether it was not going too far to extend the jurisdiction of the Court generally to cases arising Under the Constitution, & whether it ought not to be limited to cases of a Judiciary Nature. The right of expounding the cases not of this nature ought not to be given to that Department.
The motion of Docr. Johnson was agreed to nem:con: it being generally supposed that the jurisdiction given was constructively limited to cases of a Judiciary nature."


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