Article of Confederation
The article of confederation was used as the written document that described the united state government’s functions. This was after it got its independence. The article had many weaknesses than strengths. The confederation article failed as it only gave Congress the power to make laws but did not give it the ability to ensure that those laws were followed, and there was no real leader. The lack of power which was awarded to the Congress strangled the government of the federation. According to the article, Congress had no power to regulate tax and trade in the country. If a state does not have federal law, it could ignore it, which was the situation according to the article. Also, enforcing the law was difficult since the federal court system was not there. The article also failed since a unanimous decision is required to approve it. It was difficult to obtain (McLaughlin & Cunningham, 23).
Someone can prefer an article of confederation to the constitution as it provided the ability that each state across the union can maintain its sovereignty and independence. The article allowed the government to send at list two but not more than seven ambassadors to represent the state in Congress. The ambassadors were also sent to handle territory issues, and Congress will come up with the solution to solve the problems.
The biggest benefit of the constitution over the article of confederations is that the constitution allowed everybody to participate in elections. The person with the majority votes won the election. This shows that the constitution allows citizens to rule, while the article of confederations allowed only two-third to vote. The constitution created the national government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislation, and judicial. These branches were given different roles that are, for example, to make, amend and enforce the law while the article of confederation only gave the government the ability to make the law but not to implement it (Beeman et al., 25).
Work cited
Beeman, Richard R., Stephen Botein, and Edward Carlos Carter, eds. Beyond confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American national identity. UNC Press Books, 1987.
McLaughlin, Andrew Cunningham. The Confederation and the Constitution, 1783-1789. Vol. 10. Harper & brothers, 1905.