John Locke, as an advocate for limited government, believed that a government’s most essential and vital purpose was the protection of the natural rights of its citizens. According to Locke, natural rights are automatically endowed upon every person at birth, as an innate human quality, much like the human needs for shelter, food, water, and air. Natural rights are intrinsic and irrevocable and therefore cannot be taken away by any governmental power. The most important of these natural rights include life, liberty, and the protection of private property, all of which are woven in together to constitute the entire spectrum of natural rights. According to Locke, any politically moral and socially responsible government must take as its first and most basic responsibility the protection of these natural rights, from which all other benefits (such as the safeguarding of a strong economy and the national security) will then follow.

James Madison, echoing the writings of Aristotle, argued that the most enduring divisions within society are between the rich and the poor. Therefore, mixed systems are best to govern and to balance these factions.

McCulloch v. Maryland was the first constitutional case in 1803 to deal with interpreting exactly what powers rested with the national government. The Necessary and Proper clause was interpreted to give the national government implied powers beyond those powers explicitly stated.

While all of the answers were influential Enlightenment philosophers, only Hobbes wrote "The Leviathan" in 1651, which was very influential when the Framers were writing the Constitution. Rousseau wrote "The Social Contract". Locke came up with the idea of "natural rights" which influenced Jefferson when he was writing the Declaration of Independence. Montesquieu wrote about the separation of powers in government. 

Rousseau's idea of the "social contract," which asserted that the people must give up some freedom to gain the protection of the government, heavily influenced the Constitutional Framers. Although both Locke and Hobbes were important Enlightenment thinkers, neither wrote about the "social contract." Socrates was a Greek philosopher, not and Enlightenment Philosopher. Montesquieu wrote about the separation of powers in government.

After the U.S. became an independent nation, it drafted the Articles of Confederation as a general guideline for the colonies to run their new country. However, because the colonies had just gained freedom from a tyrannical, oppressive government, they shied away from creating a strong national government. Thus, the Articles were weak. After Shays' rebellion (an armed uprising), they knew that the Articles had to be reformed if their nation were to survive. So, they decided to form a written Constitution at the Constitutional Convention.

When first assembled in 1787, the Constitutional Convention had a plan for the new government issued by delegate Edmund Randolph of Virginia. The Virginia Plan, which advocated a multi-tiered legislature based on total population, became the framework for all subsequent debates at the Convention. The Virginia Plan was countered by the New Jersey Plan, which advocated for all states to have equal representation, leading to the compromise of a lower house based on population and an upper house with each state having equal representation.

The Articles of Confederation was a loose assemblage of the thirteen different states of the newly independent United States of America. With one representative from each state in Congress and few enforcement mechanisms, states were completely free to ignore federal laws regarding taxation, trade, or raising of armies. The 1787 Constitutional Convention was held to fix many of these issues, especially in light of events like Shays' Rebellion and financial crises.

At the Constitutional Convention, there were disagreements on how the Legislative Branch should be established. The big states, like New York and Virginia, favored a directly proportional representation structure based on the population of each state—this plan was called the Virginia Plan; whereas smaller states, like New Jersey, favored a system whereby each state would have equal representation in Congress regardless of the size of it’s population. This disagreement was remedied through the Connecticut Compromise, which established a bicameral legislature with a lower and upper house. This created a House of Representatives based on the population of each state, and a Senate, where each state has equal membership, regardless of population size. Additionally, the Framers could not agree on how to count slaves for the purposes of representation. New York, a free state, would have favored not counting slaves as citizens for purposes of representation in order to limit the ability of the South to affect government policy. This issue was remedied by the Three-fifths Compromise, which stated that each slave counted for three-fifths of a person for the sake of representation.

The Northwest Ordinance took place during the Articles of Confederation. It is considered by many historians to have had the most lasting impact of this period of American history. The Ordinance defined the original process by which new states could be admitted into the Union. It prohibited slavery in the territories, but allowed the states to vote on the issue of slavery once they joined the union.