ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

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Articles of Confederation

Articles of Confederation

Even before issuing the Declaration of Independence (TDOI) on July 4, 1776, (see also my critique of TDOI) the revolutionary leaders of the various rebelling States knew that not only did they need to declare the sovereignty and independence of each State from Great Britain, but that some statement must be made about the relationships between the individual sovereign States to guide their joint purposes and prevent the interstate rivalries and wars which were the norm between sovereign governments everywhere else. The Articles of Confederation, promulgated on November 15, 1777, was a statement of mutual cooperation between sovereign entities (the 13 States which ratified it). Since the States were to each continue to be fully self-sovereign, the Framers appropriately limited the terms of the Articles of Confederation to deal with those items which were related to the external environment of each of the member States, and said very little about the laws, regulations and conduct of justice within each State.

Note that once again in this critique my comments are meant to apply to the context of what information and thought was available at the time. By my current thinking, the entire basis for the Articles of Confederation was invalid, most especially any existence of governments, representation and voting. In addition some of the Articles and many of their subparts are merely somewhat arbitrary administrative details about which there was nothing to say relating to any fundamentals of freedom and I have therefore made no comments at these points.

Article I: The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."

The word "Stile" appears to have meant "official name" at the time. Note that it is a "Confederation" (an alliance of equals), not a union. However, this clear statement that it was a Confederation, with all that implies, was contradicted by the addition in Article XII of the phrase "perpetual Union". In fact, there is a confusion and alternation throughout the whole document between "Union" and "Confederation" with the last even having a variation of capitalization between different articles. These and other variations in the document clearly indicate that it was the work of a committee and was never thoroughly checked for consistency of thought and word usage. In retrospect, the authors should have called it an "Alliance" of States. This would have made it much clearer that the member States were to be always considered separate self-sovereign political entities.

This is a prime example of why it is so important to define the special words of any document as technical terms at the beginning and then to use them throughout with this same precise meaning. Great care has been taken to do this within the Natural Social Contract.

Article II: Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

The alliance was between self-sovereign entities and only for strictly enumerated purposes which were assigned to ...