Answer: Natural rights and higher law. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of citizens to life, liberty, and property. Each state constitution was a higher law that everyone had to obey.
• Social contract. Each state made it clear that it believed that government is formed as a social contract. The people agreed to form a government to protect their natural rights.
• Popular sovereignty. The term sovereign means to have the highest authority or power. Popular sovereignty means that the people are the highest authority. All the states adopted the idea that the people are the source of the authority of government. The people delegate their authority to government. Government gets its right to govern from the people.
• Representation. Each state considered it very important that the legislature be made up of elected representatives of the people. In most states, the right to vote was limited to white men who owned property. About seventy percent of the white men in America owned enough property to be able to vote. In contrast, only about ten percent were eligible to vote in Great Britain.
• Separation of powers. All the states used some form of separation of powers. They divided government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
• Checks and balances. Although the states favored a strong legislature, the constitutions did provide for some checks. Most of the checks were within the legislatures them- selves. Most legislatures had two houses. Each house could check the power of the other. The people also could check the power of the legislatures. The voters could elect new representatives to both houses if they did not like the way the government was working.
• Legislative supremacy. The major- ity of the states set up governments in which most of the power was given to the legislature. This system of government is known as legislative supremacy. The Founders believed that because the people elected the legislature, it was the most democratic branch of government. They were afraid of giving too much power to the executive branch. They remembered how the royal governors and the king had abused their power. So most of the state governors were given very limited power.
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