In this chapter, we learned that the Texas Constitution places serious limits on state
\ngovernment. Some of those restrictions are shared with the US Constitution but many go
\nbeyond it to make governing in Texas extremely challenging.
\nWe first examined some of the similarities. One of the similarities that the Texas
\nConstitution shares with the US Constitution is the belief that political power is derived from
\nthe people. Both the Texas Constitution and the US Constitution state that a conscious act of
\n\u201cthe people\u201d is involved in creating their state governments (43). We also saw that both
\nconstitutions are committed to separation of powers, \u201cthe division of governmental power
\namong several institutions that must cooperate in decision making,\u201d (43) meaning that we
\nfound that there are three different branches of government, the legislature, the executive, and
\nthe judiciary in Texas and the US. We also saw that checks and balances, the \u201cconstitutional
\nidea that overlapping power is given to different branches of government to limit the
\nconcentration of power in any one branch\u201d (43), is a feature of both constitutions intended to
\nprevent the abuse of power. Finally, we see that both constitutions limit the power of the
\ngovernment by prohibiting it from violating particular rights such as speech and assembly.
\nWe next turned to an analysis of the differences between the two documents. The US
\nConstitution is both brief and flexible (59), characteristics not shared by the Texas Constitution.
\nThe US Constitution\u2019s seven articles contrasts favorably with the 16 articles in the Texas
\nConstitution. These differences in length can be attributed to the differences in tone between
\nthe two documents. The writers of the Texas Constitution wanted to ensure the principle of
\nlimited government was paramount and therefore wrote a document that severely restricts
\nstate government (59). These differences in length and tone reflect the differences in the<\/p>\n
circumstances surrounding the writing of the two constitutions. The US Constitution was a
\nreaction to the problems of the Articles of Confederation and the Texas Constitution was a
\nreaction to centralizing state political power in the post-Civil War reconstruction government
\nand the state constitution of 1869.
\nConstitutions are written as a reaction to political circumstances and reflect the political
\ncontext when they are written. Both the US and Texas constitutions attempt to limit the
\nexercise of political power, however, because of the different times when they were written,
\nthey go about doing that in very different ways.
\nInstructor Comments:
\nThe student here does a good job answering the majority of the writing assignment prompt. The chapter
\nconclusion is well organized and written, and the student provides internal documentation from our
\ncurrent text for support. However, the student does not address whether or not the current Texas
\nconstitution works for the growing diversity of the state which was the final part of the assignment
\nprompt. This would be an A-\/B+ assignment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this chapter, we learned that the Texas Constitution places serious limits on state government. Some of those restrictions are shared with the US Constitution but many go beyond it to make governing in Texas extremely challenging. We first examined some of the similarities. One of the similarities that the Texas Constitution shares with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69799,"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69795\/revisions\/69799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assignmenttutors.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}