James Madison's Contributions to the Constitution

James Madison (1751-1836) was one of the leading promoters for the independence of the American colonies. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1776, Madison was elected a member of the convention which drew up the Virginia constitution. In 1780 he was a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Convention and during the three years of that body he strongly advocated the establishment of a central government. As a member of the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention which was convened in 1787 in Philadelphia, Madison drew up an outline for the Convention which basically was an expansion of the Virginia Constitution. Among the more notable features was the concept of a balanced system of government in which national authority would be limited by reserving certain powers to local governments and to the people. The creation of a national chief executive and the establishment of a bicameral national legislature were other key contributions made by Madison. The final draft of the Constitution embodied his belief that liberty and the rights of property could best be harmonized and secured in a federal republic with powers divided between the individual states and a supreme federal government, each with internal checks and balances to prevent the rise of arbitrary power. Because of these significant contributions, as well as his advocacy for ratification of the Constitution by the new states, James Madison has been rightly called the Father of the Constitut

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on said, would Arefine and enlarge the public view by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens@ (Hofstadter 8). Madison, then, viewed representatives chosen by the people to be wiser and more deliberate than the people themselves would be in a mass assemblage. The third element was the belief that the aristocracy and the democracy must be made to neutralize each other. This concept resulted in the formation of two houses of the legislature, with a strong, impartial executive armed with veto power. This legislative/executive system would be capped by an independent judiciary (the Supreme Court). This was the device that Madison and others developed in order to establish a balanced government. With this type of legislative structure, the body of what would be the U.S. Senate would comprise two senators from each state, two Senate votes from each state, thereby protecting small states from being overwhelmed by the bigger states. This was in keeping with the major goal of Madison=s political theory which was the prevention of tyranny. Tyranny was defined by Madison as Athe accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, may be justly pronou

Category: Government - J