Discuss The Strengths And Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation

Today, the governing document of our country is the U.S. Constitution, and has been since 1789. However, before the Constitution was written, we were under the rule of the Articles of Confederation from 1781 to 1789. This document was weak and had many problems with it, which were corrected in the Constitution. The biggest issues with the Articles of Confederation that led to the success of the Constitution were the lack of central unification, government ability to enforce laws, and organization in Congress.
The first issue with the Articles of Confederation was that it wasn’t unified with a strong central government. The Articles called for a confederacy, considering itself an alliance of 13 individual states instead of as an integrated nation. This left the power in the hands of the state, so the nation was not held together as a whole. Because the states possessed the power in the nation, the federal government didn’t have the capability to keep the states from oppressing their people, which led to harsh taxes from the states on their citizens.
Having no executive authority also led to a country that lacked central unification. The Articles didn’t include an executive branch of government to carry out laws or stand as leader of the country, owing to the fact that Britain’s leader had maltreated the citizens of the United States …show more content…
The states ran the Judiciary, with no system of courts in the national government’s control. This meant that states could ignore any national laws that they disagreed with, and because the national government had no way to enforce their laws, they couldn’t get penalized for it. Furthermore, since there was not a national judiciary system, anyone who had a complaint about the national government had no place to dispute