The
Functions of the Constitution
The
United States Constitution is an amazing document. A bold experiment
in democracy more than 200 years ago, it has proved both stable and flexible
enough to survive and remain effective in a world totally different from the
one in which it was written.
The
Constitution has three main functions. First it creates a national
government consisting of a legislative, an executive, and a judicial branch,
with a system of checks and balances among the three
branches. Second, it divides power between the federal government
and the states. And third, it protects various individual liberties
of American citizens.
The
Constitution’s framework owes much to the history that led to its drafting. The
limitations placed on the federal government and each of its branches were a
reaction to the tyranny of British rule, and especially the tyranny of the
single monarch. Yet the breadth of the national government’s powers
were a correction to the weak government of the Articles of Confederation (the
short lived system before the present constitution), that had proved incapable
of forging the thirteen original states into one nation.
