Sept. 16 Essay Assignment -- Grading Considerations

"A constitution is a mutual agreement among free persons to limit their own individual liberty, in order to pursue certain collective values and interests, by granting certain powers to a government."

How Constitution differed from this -- several ways to put it:

Federalist manipulations of the process made it not a free agreement, freely arrived at. Asymmetric participation, and "agenda control" by Federalists presented a lopsided deal to the anti-Federalists. Or more generally: Federalists' procedural advantages made this a one-sided "bargain"
People weren't all free to agree or disagree: if delegates in nine states ratified, all people in those states would be bound by the Constitution. People in late-deciding states no longer had ability to choose between new Constitution and status quo ante.
Many were affected who had no voice in the agreement -- e.g. through protections for slavery. No choice about giving up some of their liberty.
One paper: "collective value" of liberty conflicts with the Constitution's retention of slavery

Why the abstraction might nevertheless be relevant:

At least among those allowed to participate, the Constitution represents pursuit of collective interests.
Federalists hoped to allow slavery to fade away by not writing slavery explicitly into the Constitution
Many voted against Constitution because it was not their ideal; nevertheless, it could be argued that the agreement produced mutual gains whereas its failure would have produced no gain.
Need to coordinate on some such plan -- in virtually all participants' interests.
Federalists, it turned out, knew better than anti-Federalists what arrangement would produce gains for all -- hence despite anti-Federalists' lack of understanding, the wisdom of the majority (actually, state-by-state majorities) prevailed, and collective values and interests were realized.
Note that the abstraction did not require equal net benefits for participants; many of the objections seem to focus on that.

Two other points to beware:

the abstraction does NOT contemplate a bargain between the government and the people, but rather among the people; and
it speaks of "limiting their own individual liberty" in the sense of granting the government some power over themselves and everyone else -- which, if they agree to it freely, does not contradict individual liberty as a basic value)