From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In a
limited government, the power of government to intervene in the exercise of
civil liberties is restricted by
law, usually in a written
constitution. It is a principle of
classical liberalism,
free market libertarianism, and some tendencies of
liberalism and
conservatism in the United States.
[1]
The theory of limited government contrasts, for example, with the ideal
that government should intervene to promote equality and opportunity
through regulation of property and wealth redistribution.
[2]
As discussed in the Federalist Papers, the idea of limited government
originally implied the notion of a separation of powers and the system
of checks and balances promoted by the U.S. Constitution. This
understanding of limited government maintains that government is
internally limited by the system of checks and balances as well as the
Constitution itself, which can be amended, and externally through the
republican principle of electoral accountability. Such an understanding
of limited government, as explained by James Madison, does not place
arbitrary and ideologically biased parameters on the actions of a
government thus allowing government to change as time demands.
"Limited government" stands in contrast to the doctrine of the Divine
Right of Kings. Under that doctrine, the king, and by extension his
entire government, held unlimited sovereignty over its subjects. Limited
government exists where some effective limits restrict governmental
power. In
Western civilization, the
Magna Carta
stands as the early exemplar of a document limiting the reach of the
king's sovereignty. While its limits protected only a small portion of
the English population, it did state that the king's barons possessed
rights which they could assert against the king. The English Bill of
Rights associated with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 established
limits of royal sovereignty. In contrast, and as stated in the above
paragraph, The United States Constitution of 1787 created a government
limited by the terms of the written document itself, by the election by
the people of the legislators and the executive, and by the checks and
balances through which the three branches of government limited each
other's power.
In the United States of America
In 1789, James Madison presented to the
First United States Congress a series of ten
Amendments to the United States Constitution, today known as the
Bill of Rights. After enumerating specific rights retained by the people in the first eight Amendments, the
Ninth Amendment and the
Tenth Amendment
summarily spelled out the principle of limited government. Together,
these two last Amendments clarify the differences between the
un-enumerated (as well as enumerated) rights of the people versus the
expressly codified delegated powers of the
federal government.
The Ninth Amendment codified of the people do not have powers are
expressly delegated to the federal government specifically by the
Constitution. Government can do some things and not others.
The Constitution limits the power of the government in several ways.
It prohibits the government from directly interfering with certain key
areas: conscience, expression and association. Other actions are
forbidden to the federal government and are reserved to
state or local governments.
See also
Contrast:
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