Speech 2

Oh, what a fierce battle it was, for 8 years the rebels fought against the
powerful armies of Great Britain. After clenching the freedom that they so
rightly deserved, the rebels faced an obstacle of greater proportions. The
same colonists that fought 8 bloody years to break free of their government
now had to create a new one. They knew that they had to have a law limiting
the power of whatever type of government they chose. The idea of limiting
the power of government came from the colonists own experiences with, The
British government, and ancient Greek history. The founding fathers knew
that without limiting the powers of government, the government would
inevitably become corrupt. A law enacted by the legislative branch wouldnt
work because the legislature could just as easily change or remove that law.
Another reason that a legislative law wouldnt work is because a legislative
law would give too much power to the legislative branch and it wasnt broad
enough to define the limits of each branch. No what the founding fathers
needed was a higher law. A law that couldnt be changed by the government
without the permission of those being governed, the founding fathers
created a constitution a list of rules to which the government had to abide A
constitutional law is different from a legislative statute because it would
define the powers of each branch and the relationship that each branch has
with each other, namely the checks and balances. The constitution itself
sparked many debates between the federalist and the anti-federalists. The
federalist believed that the powers of government include but are not limited

to those written in the constitution, and that there is no need to enumerate

the rights of the people in the constitution for by enumerating those rights
you limit the rights of the people thereof. The anti-federalists believed that
all the powers of government are clearly stated in the constitution, and that
a bill of rights must be added to the constitution to protect the rights of the
people. The framers knowing that by the passage of time the meanings of
the constitution would become misconstrued gave the judicial branch (article
three of the constitution) the unenumerated power to define the meanings of
the constitutions and apply those definitions to laws. This unenumerated
power was not used until 1803 in Marbury V. Madison where the Supreme
Court stated that the Judiciary Act of 1789 extended the power of the
judiciary branch beyond that which was previously defined in the
Constitution making the law unconstitutional, and forming the basis for
Judicial Review. Deciding how much power the government should hold was
an even greater challenge. This challenged sparked many debates such as
state vs federal government. The thirteen colonies each had their own state
constitution and could pass their own laws this sparked the debate between
which government should have greater power the state government or the
federal government. If the state government was more powerful then the
states could pass laws that violate the federal constitution. To solve this
problem The Supremacy Clause was made. Article six of the US constitution
also known as the supremacy clause states that The US constitution, Federal
statutes, and US treaties are the supreme law of the land. The supremacy

has been applied in the making of laws such as Proposition 8, or prop 8 as it

is widely referred to is a law that bans same sex marriages, the law was
enacted in California in 2004 and sent to the Supreme Court for judicial
review. The law was found to be unconstitutional in 2013 under the
supremacy the clause the law could not be passed because it violated the US
constitution.