POLS 2311 1st Edition Lecture 6 Outline of Last Lecture I. QuotesII. 8 Greatest DocumentsOutline of Current Lecture I. U.S. Constitution PurposeII. Why we need government? Current LectureI. U.S. Constitution Purpose- 1. To authorize governmento Other countries try to mimic us and make a constitution or outline the structure of the government. - 2. To outline structure of governmento To define the organization. - 3. To define and limit powerso The authorities over us would take advantage of us so we designed a governmentto do things for us like leaders but they do not have the power to take advantage of us like the emperors or kings. - 4. To establish legal contracts and identify rights of the people. o The constitution is a rulebook or playbook. It tells you the rules/laws of what can and cannot be done. o It’s a legal contract, just like marriage and divorce papers. People can go to jail when it’s broken. o The authors of the constitution meant the words to not be taken literally. Our rights only exist to a certain point, until we interfere with someone else’s rights. - 5. To outline political affairso We expand political rights to the citizens. o Before no one got to participate except the king and his royals. We expanded it to all adult white males that owned property. This was a great start because it was a good portion of the population. It was about 50,000 males that could vote.They all gathered together to make decisions. They were the government. These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.o Later we decided instead of a King we would elect a President. We would still allow the people to elect him but they feared they would choose wrong, so they established an electoral college. The Electoral College would be allowed to step in and vote, which could ultimately change who becomes the president. The Al Gore and George Bush election is a prime example of how this happened. Gore won the popular vote but Bush won the electoral vote, so he became president. o The Connecticut Compromise brought together two plans, the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan was a proposal that was geared towards larger states. It proposed bicameral legislation, outlining a representative selection process that was reliant on the individual state’s population. The New Jersey Plan proposed a selection process, which geared towards smaller stats. It suggested a unicameral legislation, which was one where every state would have equal representation. o They set terms for the Senate because they knew that if they served for over six years it would be very hard to remember what happened and what they said or did wrong, which could lead to corruption. o The president serves for three years due to the same reason. o The authors did not want judges to be live governors or politicians who go around kissing babies and slapping backs they want them to enforce the laws andbe referees of the law. II. Why we need government? - Federalist #51: “But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” James Madison. - The judiciary is like football. Would we respect NFL referees if they were corrupt and slant their decisions towards a certain team by calling penalties? We would not respect them, so why would we respect judges if they went around kissing babies, handing out favors, and other corrupt things. - The authors of the constitution came up with various plans but the only one that was best of all the evils was that the president is the only person who can appoint a federal judge and the federal senate is the only one who can give you that seat after questioningand