WI: Const. Conv. picks the New Jersey Plan?

Flubber

Banned
You've got to make the plan attractive to the smaller states for any chance of it being adopted. That being said, the New Jersey Plan:



  • Assumes the superiority of state sovereignty over federal sovereignty in most cases
    Uses population measurements for more government activities
    Is legislature focused
    Has no real separation of powers


Remember Shelby Foote's little anecdote in Burn's Civil War about the difference between the postwar "United States are" and the prewar "United State is"? This United States definitely would be an United State are type set-up.

Other than a few population-proportionate taxes sent to a common treasury and. oddly enough, population-proportionate levees sent to the federal armed services, the federal government doesn't have much power over the states. The states can still erect internal tariffs and the feds must still ask the states for money apart from the taxes I mentioned earlier.

This US will be less economically integrated, much more prone to secession, more hamstring by internal politics, and less inclined to a unified Manifest Destiny policy.
 
The New Jersey plan was mostly intended as a basis for negotiation on the Virginia Plan, not necessarily a serious counterproposal.
 
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