May 17, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
The Idea of Supreme Court
It is not much emphasized anywhere (at
least I did not get to hear or read about it explicitly in general popular
media) but the idea of Supreme Court owes much to the founding fathers of the
United States constitution.
In the Constitutional Convention that took
place in the Pennsylvania State House and lasted almost four months from the
month of May of 1787 to its September the founding fathers of the United States
discussed among themselves the ways to form an ideal government with checks and
balances and without concentration of power to one side.
They understood that humans were inherently
prone to misuse of power and vulnerable to corruption and hence their must
within the system exist checking mechanisms to counter that.
One of the ways they considered in brining
this about was to introduce the idea of division of powers between the
legislative and the executive and it was debated.
Until then judiciary in its English
tradition was treated as an aspect of royal or executive authority.
It was in this Constitutional Convention of
1787 where the new idea of creating a third pillar of government was born.
The constitutional convention was attended
by 55 delegates of whom more than half had been trained as lawyers of which
several had been judges and almost all of them had taken part in the
Revolution.
The delegates also had in them merchants,
manufacturers, bankers, financiers, land speculators, men in shipping industry
and even some physicians and small farmers.
Most of the delegates were landowners and
25 of them were slave holders and all of them were comfortably wealthy with few
of them having exceptional wealth.
George Washington from Virginia and Robert
Morris from Pennsylvania were among the wealthiest men in the nation with
Robert Morris for his financial aid to the Revolution came to be known as the
“Financier of the Revolution” and one of the founding fathers of the financial
system of the United States.
Ironically enough in his later days after
his career as a Senator Morris went into financial debt speculating on land and
he was sent to debtor’s prison where he spent three and a half years.
His death was ignominious bereft of any
public ceremony.
But for Morris most of the men who came to
be known as the founding fathers would hardly have the need to be corrupt or
greedy the way most modern politicians (it is true of all nations) are seen to
be whose primary aim to enter politics is to make a career for themselves at
best and to amass unimaginable wealth that would last for and suffice for
generations at worst.
Besides adequate wealth almost all the 55
men who constituted the delegates were highly learned with in depth experience
in self governance that would have its long lasting echoes and reverberations
in centuries to come.
The delegates - from all the evidence that
we have - seem to be aware of the historical impact this event would have in
future for the nation and perhaps the entire world.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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