The Constitution of the United States was intended for creating a legislature, an executive, and a national judiciary that would operate throughout the country and resolve main issues associated with public and private affairs. States would be banned from infringing upon property rights while the government would represent the people. The main objective, therefore, was to create an effective republican government that would resolve the competing claims of power and liberty. However, the development of the Constitution facilitated the emergence of differences in perspectives as to how the balance between competing demands should be achieved. For example, in the early proceedings, a Virginia Plan was proposed, which, on the one hand, suggested the development of a two-house legislature with the population of each state determining their representation.
On the other hand, there was the New Jersey Plan that offered a compromise: the creation of a single-house Congress in which every state could have one vote. In the end, an agreement was reached to establish a two-house Congress that would include a Senate, in which each state would have two members, and the House of Representatives that would be apportioned according to population numbers. Therefore, the critical challenge associated with reaching a compromise pertained to the need to ensure fair and equal representation of the public in the government. There was the need to separate the powers and facilitate a system of checks and balances that would prevent any branch, whether executive or legislative, from prevailing over the other. The compromise embedded into the Constitution referred to the prevention of power accumulation that would be dangerous to liberty and authority within the government itself.