Daniel Cintron                            assignment 3                                                                    10/1/15

No. 78 is an early defense of the principle of "judicial review" which gives power to the Supreme Court to strike down laws or other actions that contradicts the Constitution

What were the flaws of the government under the Articles of Confederation that Hamilton was specifically concerned with? Why was a strong national government the solution to the problems that Hamilton saw? Consider the following quote by Hamilton from no. 15, “Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which it is controlled or abridged” (p. 112), another way of stating the idea of checks and balances, power checks power.

Overall this passage is about questioning power, specifically an abundance of power being giving to one side of government in regards to the Articles of Confederation. Alexander Hamilton was afraid that there would be more power on one side than the other in terms of the form of government, therefore in his quote he mentioned the idea of checks and balances. The concept of checks and balances is to guarantee that based on the government, one side does not obtain more power than the other. The meaning of this paragraph is to question if the national government is getting too much power or not enough power, either situation can cause chaos within the nation, which is why the checks and balances was such a great idea, too balance power under the Articles of Confederation.

In my opinion, I believe this paragraph is important because, from what I understood, a serious problem could have upraised if Alexander Hamilton did not mention the concept of checks and balances in his quote. It is important to have power within a national government, however each part or branch of the national government should have an equal amount of power, or otherwise maybe in the future a civil war will be declared. The reason why I chose this paragraph is because, I feel like power is always be a topic within the discussions of the United States national government. Whether it was in the past, in the present, or in the future, power is somehow related to the conflicts within a nation’s government.