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The Anti-Federalists believed that the Constitution, as drafted, would lead to a loss of individual liberties, an erosion of state sovereignty, and the potential for the rise of tyranny. They advocated for a more decentralized form of government with greater protections for individual rights and stronger representation for the states.
The Anti-Federalist papers failed to halt the ratification of the Constitution but they succeeded in influencing the first assembly of the United States Congress to draft the Bill of Rights. [2] These works were authored primarily by anonymous contributors using pseudonyms such as " Brutus " and the " Federal Farmer ."
The Massachusetts Compromise was a solution reached in a controversy between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the ratification of the United States Constitution.The compromise helped gather enough support for the Constitution to ensure its ratification and led to the adoption of the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.
The sharp Anti-Federalist critique of the Constitution did not abate after it became operational, and by the time the First Congress convened in March 1789, there existed widespread sentiment in both the House and Senate in favor of making alterations. That September, Congress adopted twelve amendments and sent to the states for ratification.
The first topic that Madison addresses is the differentiation between a republic and a democracy.. George Clinton, the Governor of New York and one of the foremost authors of the Anti-Federalist papers at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, cited Montesquieu, a political philosopher who authored "The Spirit of the Laws", [5] to support his argument.
The Lemon test has been criticized by justices and legal scholars, but it has remained the predominant means by which the Court enforced the Establishment Clause. [61] In Agostini v. Felton (1997), the entanglement prong of the Lemon test was converted to simply being a factor in determining the effect of the challenged statute or practice. [38]
The Anti-Federalists persisted, and several state ratification conventions refused to ratify the Constitution without a more specific list of protections, so the First Congress added what became the Ninth Amendment as a compromise. Because the rights protected by the Ninth Amendment are not specified, they are referred to as "unenumerated".
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America is a three-volume work by John Adams, written between 1787 and 1788.The text was Adams’ response to criticisms of the proposed American government, particularly those made by French economist and political theorist Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, who had argued against bicameralism and separation of powers.