Compare and Contrast the Virginia and New Jersey Plans Presented at Essay

Compare and Contrast the Virginia and New Jersey Plans Presented at the Constitutional Convention - Essay Example According to the Virginia plan, there should be a national legislature consisting of two branches; the first house would consist of elected representatives of various USA states, and they would serve for a period of three years, and the second branch of legislature would consist of members elected by individual legislatures of the first house, and they would serve for seven years. On the contrary, the New Jersey plan does not address the legislative branch of government for it assumes that the USA national congress is the legislature of USA. For that reason, no details are given for the composition of the legislature, and the terms of service for its members. But the New Jersey plan supports giving more powers to the individual states, so as to be able to make legislation on internal affairs of the states. This, therefore, means that the New Jersey plan supports the creation of federal Congress. The details of how federal legislation was made are not given in the New Jersey plan. The main difference between the Virginian plan and the New Jersey plan on congressional representation is that, while the Virginian congress was composed of representatives of various states, who had equal voting rights, the federal congress supported by the New Jersey plan is composed only of members of the same state. For that reason, the national Congress supported by the Virginian plan had jurisdiction of the whole nation, while the federal congress supported by the New Jersey plan had jurisdiction only over the particular state, where the Congress was found. This was meant to ensure that the state and the nation related well, the federal congress was not supposed to deal with matters outside its power/jurisdiction. According to the Virginia plan, a national executive should be constituted, consisting of a single person, chosen by the members of the national legislature. The head of the executive would serve for a period of seven years.