PLCY 702 Constitutional Connections Paper Assignment
PLCY 702 Constitutional Connections Paper 1
Thesis
The American Colonies were not sufficiently justified by biblical principles to engage in armed conflict against the British government. While many colonial Christian faith and secular leaders made strong assertions as to biblical justification for taking up arms against the Crown, in the end (and especially for a set of colonies so overwhelmingly Protestant), the Protestant principles of Sola Scriptura and Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres (“sacred Scripture is its own interpreter”) still apply, and the interpretations of men – even men of considerable faith – is irrelevant if it violates the Scripture. To the extent the colonists call upon God or the Bible for justification of their rebellion, it is to give the veneer of divine approval to what is, by the colonists’ own argumentation, more an issue of violating their Positive Law rights under the British common law and the colonies charters from the crown.
PLCY 702 Constitutional Connections Paper 2
Thesis
While the Constitutional Conventioneers argued both in the Convention and afterwards through The Federalist Papers and in the State Ratifying Convention that all the proposed federal government’s powers were specifically enumerated and limited, and that all such powers not specifically enumerated remained with the States and the People, the actual text of the Articles II and III, concerning the Executive and Judicial Branches respectively, provided no such specific limitations, and therefore provided these other Branches the means to constitutionally expand their powers over the States and the People, with little legal recourse available for either of those constitution-drafting groups. Further, the Necessary and Proper Clause in Article I provided Congress the means to sidestep any of the other limitations placed upon it in Article I. And, the Supremacy Clause in Article VI provided the Judicial Branch them means to expand its own powers by its own decisions, as well as to “buy-off” the other branches by expanding their individual powers by the same judicial logic.
PLCY 702 Constitutional Connections Paper 3
Thesis
In justifying their rebellion and in arguing for the ratification of the Constitution, the American Whigs made several claims regarding their positions being aligned both with a Christian concept of justice and with a universal concept of Natural Law. The American Whigs enlisted or heralded the support of Christian faith leaders who made arguments for the Christian justification of the rebellion, and many of the supporters of the proposed U.S. Constitution relied on Western theological philosophies of Natural Law to argue the proposed Constitution was in alignment with those philosophies. But in the final analysis, the new American political leaders both missed answering the biblical requirements they claimed in the Constitution and did not bring forward a constitution fully based on Natural Law.
Instructions:
Every debate and decision in American public policy is ultimately grounded in the Constitution’s text, context, and historic application. As the student enters this doctoral program in public policy, it is essential for the student to narrow his/her research focus and learn about the constitutional provisions and precedents related to his/her area of public policy interest as soon as possible.
The three Constitutional Connection assignments in this course will assist the student in understanding the constitutional provisions and debates that are relevant to his/her area of public policy interest. These assignments are intended to help the student develop a foundation for a historical and normative assessment of the constitutional framework that governs public policy in the area of his/her interest and research.
This series of research papers asks the student to examine themes relevant to his/her area of public policy interest in three moments in our nation’s constitutional history: 1) the Colonial and Confederation Era; 2) the Constitutional Era (including state and/or federal constitutions); 3) the Ratification and Early Republican Era.
The body of each essay should be solidly grounded in one or more primary source documents drawn from the time period in question, and should be supplemented by relevant scholarship. It should define the range of opinion or practice related to this area of public policy and detail one or more critical points of debate. It should also explain and evaluate ways in which the handling of this public policy area in the Constitution and/or founding era continues to remain relevant to current public policy debates.