The Constitution was developed because of the need to make changes to the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was the agreed-upon document used in the US government’s first attempt to govern. The problem was that the Articles of Confederation were too limited. They technically designated most power to Congress but also made Congress so dependent on states that it could not do much at the federal level. For example, under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could not request states to pay taxes. There was also no system of federal courts and no executive branch, just the president who presided over Congress. This meant that there was no effective system of checks and balances to watch over Congress.

The Constitution aimed to address the gaps in the Articles of Confederation. At the constitutional convention in 1787, one of the main suggestions was to distribute the government’s power between three branches. This way the government would have useful power at the national level but would still be kept in check and not become too powerful.

There was also a great deal of debate as to what the legislative branch should look like. One suggestion was that every state had an equal vote in Congress. This was a bit unfair to larger states because they had larger populations than smaller states, meaning that they would not have as much representation. Others wanted representation to match the population, but that suggestion was a bit unfair to the smaller states.

In the end, Robert Sherman from Connecticut orchestrated what is called "the great compromise" to resolve the debate. The legislative branch was split into two houses. The House of Representatives has representation that is proportional to each state’s population, and the Senate has the same number of representatives for all states.