founding fathers

(noun)

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, and establishing the United States Constitution.

Related Terms

  • last of the romans
  • constitutional convention

Examples of founding fathers in the following topics:

  • The Framers of the Constitution

    • The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders who participated in the American Revolution.
    • The "Founding Fathers" included two major groups.
    • Some historians consider the "Founding Fathers" to be a larger group, which includes not only the Signers and the Framers but also ordinary citizens who took part in winning American independence and creating the United States of America.
    • Morris identified seven figures as the main Founding Fathers: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
    • The Founding Fathers had strong educational backgrounds at some of the colonial colleges or abroad.
  • Bicameralism

    • The Founding Fathers of the United States favored a bicameral legislature.
    • Describe bicameralism and the Founding Fathers' understanding of its role in American federalism
  • Religious Freedom

    • Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and 3rd President of the United States
  • Common Law

    • Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague.
    • However, it is universally accepted that the Founding Fathers of the United States, by vesting judicial power into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts in Article Three of the United States Constitution, vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulate persuasive precedent.
    • This power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified.
  • The Supreme Court as Policy Makers

    • Many of the Founding Fathers accepted the notion of judicial review.
  • The Establishment Clause: Separation of Church and State

    • James Madison, often regarded as the "Father of the Bill of Rights", also often wrote of the "perfect separation", "line of separation", and "total separation of the church from the state. "
    • The controversy surrounding Establishment Clause incorporation primarily stems from the fact that one of the intentions of the Establishment Clause was to prevent Congress from interfering with state establishments of religion that existed at the time of the founding.
    • Critics have also argued that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is understood to incorporate only individual rights found in the Bill of Rights; the Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause (which critics readily concede protects individual rights), does not purport to protect individual rights.
    • Founding Father and Third President of the United States.
  • The Constitution

    • Several ideas found in the Constitution were new.
    • The English political theorist Thomas Hobbes was very influential to the Founding Fathers when the created the Constitution of the United States.
  • Democracy

    • Although not explicitly described as a democracy by the founding fathers, the United States founders also shared a determination to root the American experiment in the principle of natural freedom and equality.
  • The Public-Education Function of Congress

    • In 1903, he persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to transfer by executive order the papers of the Founding Fathers from the State Department to the Library of Congress.
  • History of the Welfare State

    • Although the United States lagged far behind European countries in instituting concrete social welfare policies, the earliest and most comprehensive philosophical justification for the welfare state was produced by the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913, ) whom the historian Henry Steele Commager called "the father of the modern welfare state".
    • Others were founded on state provision.
    • Although the United States lagged far behind European countries in instituting concrete social welfare policies, the earliest and most comprehensive philosophical justification for the welfare state was produced by the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913) whom the historian Henry Steele Commager called "the father of the modern welfare state."
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