What are the major differences in the Article of Confederation and the
United States Constitution? And what is agreed upon in each? And which
part promotes democray and which parts limit it?

The Articles of Confederation were a sort of proto-Constitution. The
AofC were written in 1777 and passed in 1787, and the Constitution
came later, designed to overcome what were seen as weaknesses in the
Articles of Confederation. (I'm going to call these the AofC from now
on, so my fingers don't fall off before I'm done.)

First, here's a link to the complete text of the AofC:

http://majoritywhip.house.gov/constitution/Related-Topics/confedr.htm

And here's one for the Constitution:

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt

A detailed history of both these documents, as well as a number of
related documents, is available at Yale University's Avalon Project
webpage at:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/artconf.htm

And here is a chart that compares the specific differences between the
AofC and the Constitution:

http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/chart.art.html

In a nutshell, the AofC provided the lion's share of power to the
individual states, with little provision for a federal government. In
the AofC, for example, the federal government had no power to tax
individuals, gave much less power to the President of the US, allowed
states to coin their own legal tender, and provided little in the way
of federal enforcement of laws. The AofC also required unanimous
consent from the states to enact new amendments.

This page describes the weaknesses of the AofC:

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_arti.html

The Constitution created a more cohesive federal government, allowing
for more centralized control of things such as coining money,
enforcing laws, collecting taxes, and passing laws.

Here is a discussion of the Article of Confederation:

http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/articles/

From the above referenced page, "The Congress was responsible for
conducting foreign affairs, declaring war or peace, maintaining an
army and navy and a variety of other lesser functions. But the
Articles denied Congress the power to collect taxes, regulate
interstate commerce and enforce laws."

Here are a couple of links titled "How the Constitution Overcame
Weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation" pointing to discussions
on The Making of a Constitutional Convention and Weaknesses in the
Articles of Confederation.

As far as the similarities between the two, there are many when one
considers the broad range of political systems available. Both
established a representative

Here's another comparison of the differences:

http://www.usconstitution.net/constconart.html

From the page listed above:
"The two documents have much in common - they were established by the
same people (sometimes literally the same exact people, though mostly
just in terms of contemporaries). But they differ more than they do
resemble each other, when one looks at the details."

As far as promoting democracy, this may be a bit of a trick question.
The US is not technically a democracy, but a republic. That is, the
rights of the people are controlled, not 'mob rule.' In a true
democracy, neither the AofC nor the Constitution would likely exist at
all.

See these pages for a more detailed explanation:

http://www.devvy.com/democracy.html
http://www.notademocracy.org/

Specifically, though, there are certain elements of these documents
that promote certain democratic ideals. For example, the ninth
amendment to the Constitution is "The enumeration in the Constitution,
of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people." This establishes that the Constitution is not
a complete listing of the rights of the American people.

If you are more interested in the granularity of the rights, I suppose
that the AofC provide something closer to democracy, in that they
grant far more rights to individual states than to the federal
government, and consequently provide a bigger chunk of representation
for individuals.

But it could be argued that any text outlining the rights of states
and of the federal government limits democracy, so the parts of these
documents that actually promote democracy are the parts that limit the
rights of the state or the federal government.

By these standards, the following might apply:

Constitution:

Article 1, Section 9 establishes limits to the powers of Congress.
Article 1, Section 10, although it generally limits the rights of
states in favor of federal rights, does establish limits to states'
rights, and could, as such, promote democracy for large enough values
of 'promote.'
Article 4, Section 2 guarantees that citizens of the various states
are treated equally.
The Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) also
guarantee individual rights, notably the ninth amendment, mentioned
earlier, and the tenth, which states that powers that are not granted
to the federal government belong to either the states or to
individuals.

AofC:

Article 4 outlines certain individual rights for "the free inhabitants
of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from
justice excepted, ...," which sort of promotes democracy as long as
there are no paupers, vagabonds, or fugitives from justice in the
country at the time.

I realize that you may have had something else in mind as far as the
promotion of democracy, so if you can define this in more detail, I'll
be happy to see what else I can find for you.

Good luck,
Lisa.

Search terms:

"articles of confederation" constitution
america "not a democracy" republic

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Request for Answer Clarification by renythpets-ga on 19 Jul 2002 11:42 PDT

I am doing compare and constrast paper on the different constitutions:
 The constitution of Pennsylvania, Religious Clauses in the State
constitutions, The Articles of confederation, Constitution of the
Confederate States and United States constitution.  I have 8 questions
to answer. 1) what is agreed upon? 2) are some constitutions less
demonatic than others? 3) which parts promotes democray and which
parts limit it? 4) what safeguards are built into these constitutions
and why? 5) How complex are these plans? 6) do these plans favor any
groups over thoses or concentrate economic power? 7) what relationship
between church and state (govt) is determined and why? 8) major
different from A of C and the US constitution.  i am willing to pay
more if needed.

---

Clarification of Answer by lisarea-ga on 19 Jul 2002 13:52 PDT

Hi.

The information you're looking for can be found in the links
originally provided, although many of these topics require some level
of original work on your part.

In particular, see the link at: 

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/artconf.htm 
 
which provides a navigation bar that will guide you through the full
text and discussions of several of these documents, and:

http://www.usconstitution.net/otherdocs.html

which provides full text of a number of historical documents, as well
as additional links at the bottom of the page.

If you'd like to post additional questions, please feel free to do so
separately, keeping in mind that you'll need to stay within certain
guidelines so that your questions couldn't be construed as asking
someone else to do your homework. It's reasonable to ask researchers
to help you find source documents, and even to tie them together, but
if you've been asked to write an original paper that calls for
conclusions, those conclusions need to either be your original work,
or they must be cited in your paper.

See the #43 of Google Answers FAQ here for the guidelines on what sort
of questions we can't answer for you:

https://answers.google.com/answers/faq.html

And good luck. It sounds like a fun project to work on.

Lisa.

Great!  thanks for the help