We The People Means essays

We The People Means essays A long time ago in 1789, the term We the People, which is stated in the constitution, represented a very exclusive group. This term represented the white males that were landowners. As you can see, the world has changed a lot from back then. Here in 2002, We the People refers to all U.S. citizens and covers more diverse groups. The three reasons that this changed had taken place was because of the use of formal Amendments, informal Amendments, and there were many court cases. First of all, the formal amendment helped this change big time. For instance, the 15th amendment states that The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Also in the 19th amendment it is said The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied... on account of sex. Both of these formal amendments show an example of how the term We the People has increased in how many people it represents from then to now. Another issue that helped increase the representation of We the People was the informal amendment. Informal amendments are common changes that do not affect the wording of the Constitution. Some examples of informal amendments that changed the meaning would be the actions of President Roosevelt during World War II. The law at the time was that there was to be segregation between the black and white soldiers. The president took action on this issue and got rid of the segregation. This is an example of informal segregation. The last reason that helped to increase the number of people represented by We the People is court cases from the past and present. One big case, for instance, would be that of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. This issue started because of the segregation of blacks and whites in public schools. This changed a l ...