Obviously,
the thing to discuss when examining the Articles of Confederation – the topic
which most closely bears upon the nature of that document and the government it
created – is the manner by which it sought to balance the power and priorities
of the state governments and the national government of the United States of
America. Rest assured there is much to say on that subject, and much that will
be said in time. For the moment, however, because historical minutiae is rarely
as trivial as it appears, this series will instead begin its exploration of the
first constitution of the American republic by drawing attention to some of the
clauses and provisions within the text of the Articles that appear especially
odd or irregular when viewed through the lens of what Americans shortly came to
understand about the nature of federal power and the best means by which to
define it. Choices were made by the authors of the Articles that were
substantially at odds with what the United States later became under the
Constitution, and thus seemed to exert little impact upon the evolution of
national power in the American republic. Anomalous though these developments
may appear, however, they were surely none of them the product of
thoughtlessness or random chance. The authors of the Articles of Confederation
may have been naïve, short-sighted, and ill-prepared for the task at hand, but
it cannot be doubted that they regarded their work seriously and thoughtfully.
They would not have inserted clauses at random, therefore, or attempted to
apply a structure to the resulting national government without – to the best of
their abilities – reflecting upon the implications of the choices they were
making. In consequence, it would seem fair to characterize these aforesaid
anomalous elements of the Articles of Confederation as collectively representing
a kind of window into contemporary American political thought. Specifically, by
attempting to understand them in light of the circumstances under which the Articles
themselves were drafted, it would seem possible to tease out some of the base
assumptions and prejudices of the framers thereof.
Consider,
for example, what certain of their structural decisions communicate as to what
the framers of the Articles believed was possible and/or preferable in the
realm of national administrative authority. Whereas the Constitution of the
United States grants to the Supreme Court the exclusive right to hear all
cases, “In which a State shall be Party” – pursuant to Article III, Section 2 –
the ninth of the Articles of Confederation declared that, “The United States in
Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and
differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more
States concerning boundary, jurisdiction, or any other causes whatever [.]” On
the surface, the difference between these mechanisms of interstate adjudication
would seem to be mainly procedural. That is to say, while the Framers of the
Constitution chose to rely upon both the primacy already enjoyed by the Supreme
Court as the authority of last appeal in the American republic and its inherent
status as an arbitrator of disputes in assigning to it the task of settling
quarrels between states, the framers of the Articles determined to allow
Congress to mediate any such differences via the selection and empanelling of
commissioners for that purpose. One method is not necessarily better than the
other, though that which was established by the Constitution is ostensibly more
efficient. Rather, the respective authors of the first and second governing
documents of the United States of America would simply seem to have come to
different conclusions as to whether a conflict between states was a judicial
matter or an administrative one.
That
the decision reached by one group in 1777 was evidently rejected by a second
group a decade later, however, almost certainly owed more to an evolving
conception of state power than a mere matter of preference. Along with the
Presidency, the Supreme Court represents perhaps the most powerful example within
the Government of the United States of a truly national institution. The scope
of its jurisdiction and the authority granted its rulings ensures that while it
may often hear cases of somewhat parochial significance, the decisions it
renders will always bear upon every subsequent exercise of public power at
every level of government anywhere in America. Delegating to this body the task
of settling disagreements between the states seems therefore an eminently
sensible choice. Not only are they already bound to observe and implement the
rulings thereof, but the Court is designed to function without any
consideration for the particular interests of specific parties, communities, or
states. No such institution existed under the auspices of the Articles, of
course. Congress was really the only permanent mechanism of national government
recognized by said document, and its authority over the states, counties, and
municipalities of which the American republic was/is comprised nowhere
approached the power later to be enjoyed by the United States Supreme Court. Congress
could not interpret state laws or declare them invalid, enjoyed sole
jurisdiction in a very limited range of policy areas, and was in no way capable
of functioning as an impartial guardian of the national well-being.
Quite the opposite, in fact –
Congress was supposed to represent the states as states, allow them to exercise
their priorities and make their voices heard, and in the process (somehow)
distill a national consensus from among their intersecting concerns. The
implication thereof – as it bears upon the need for an American government to
hear and render decisions upon disagreements between individual states – would
seem to be twofold. First, the fact that there was no national judiciary to
whom such a responsibility might have more sensibly been assigned appeared to
ensure that Congress would of necessity be the only possible forum for the
airing of such disputes. Second, and more fundamentally, the fact that the
framers of the Articles were reconciled to this arrangement – that their
conception of a national government failed to include any institution better
able to render decisions of national significance than Congress – speaks
volumes about their ability or their willingness to conceive of the United
States of America as much more than a relatively loose alliance of independent
republics. Certainly, history would demonstrate soon enough that more expansive
thinking was both possible and necessary. Indeed, much of what the Framers of
the Constitution sought to correct was the inability of the national government
under the Articles to behave in a way that prejudiced that national interest
over those of the states. The Supreme Court was one of several mechanisms they
accordingly designed to both seek out and promote uniformity and harmony in law
and government across the whole of the American republic. In addition to being
a wholly necessary task for a national government to perform, the settlement of
disputes between states was one such means by which this harmonization could be
accomplished. While the framers of the Articles appeared to agree with the
former assertion, the fact that they assigned the responsibility to Congress –
as per the aforementioned Article IX – speaks to their unwillingness to yet bow
to the importance of the latter. America, in their minds, was not yet a nation
– with needs and interests separate and distinct from those of the states
themselves – and they set about creating a framework for its administration
accordingly.
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