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Federal government's checks and balances
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Federal government's checks and balances
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In American government, there are six basic principles in our Constitution. These principles include popular sovereignty, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review, and federalism. They have all made an important impact on society today, including popular sovereignty, checks and balances, and separation of powers. These principles can be found in many of our nation's historical documents, from the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence. Through these, we can see what lawmakers from the revolution thought of the future of America and the vision they had.
One principle of American government is popular sovereignty, which is the idea of people being the source of any and all governmental power. It
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You can see this in the Constitution in Article II Section 2, which states how the President can veto a bill even if it has passed in Congress if he/she feels that the bill is unconstitutional. This power makes it so that Congress doesn’t have more power than the president, but at the same time there is a rule that if 2/3 of congress votes in favor of the bill, then they can make it a law anyway, ensuring that the President doesn’t have more power than Congress. This principle can also be outlined in the Federalist Papers. Federalist Paper No. 51 states "Ambition must be made to counter ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place." This meant that the framers believed that if one person/branch had all of the power, we would be far more corrupt and more like the monarchical government that they had just left in England. They believed that we would have a much better system if we distributed powers amongst lots of …show more content…
You can see an example of this in the Constitution in the first sections of Articles I-III. These sections spell out the powers of each branch of government and states who can do what and who has what powers. You can see how each of the branches have distinct things they can and can’t do, and how no branch is more powerful than another. This principle can also be found in the Massachusetts State Constitution. It states "Each branch shall never exercise the powers of another branch," meaning that each branch in our government has its own distinct powers and that the other branches cannot overtake them. This meant, again, that they wanted to be a different country than their mother country England. They knew that all of the power being in one person's hands was a recipe for disaster. So they took all of the powers that a political system should have and divided it amongst three different areas, so that no one person was too powerful. They believed that this was the best way to avoid corrupt
Exceptions to these rules are often required because of a lack of knowledge of the skills and expertise need to serve in government positions. For example the branches should strive to be independent from the other two branches. With each branch seeking to follow their own agenda rather than being controlled by others as they serve their sentences. Madison then proceeds to address the significant need of constitutional safeguards to prevent the gradual concentration of power. For example “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of man must be connected with the constitutional rights.” This provides us protection from those in the government and those who abuse their power because since we aren’t angels we will abuse power if given the chance and opportunity to. One of the greatest problems the government will face is controlling those they govern and themselves. Thus dependence on the peoples will is the government’s main source of power with other precautions. These precautions include the division of power within each branch to prevent any one branch from becoming unstoppable. However it isn’t possible to ensure that all branches receive equal power of defense. In republican governments, the legislative branch
In conclusion this is why tyranny and federalism, separation of power, checks and balances and big and small states all mean that they are important to know also the branches are a big part especially in the separation of
You little tyrant king george off with your head.Since the Americans had a bad experience with one person having too much power they made a constitution that guarded against tyranny by, dividing power, making the branches able to check or limit each other, and dividing power between big and little states.
James Madison once said,” All men having power ought to be distrusted.” Through these words, Madison made the statement that not all government officials use their authority for good; some abuse that power and use it to gain more for themselves rather than vesting it within the people. This issue may lead to tyranny. Tyranny is when all powers belong to only one person or group. In May of 1787, the Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia to draft a better constitution. One of the topics that concerned many was how the constitution would guard against tyranny. Madison and the other delegates wanted a Constitution that would be strong enough to unite the states and the people together without letting there be one person or group gain too much power. They achieved this in several ways. Today, the U.S. Constitution guards against tyranny by including a separation of powers, federalism, and the fair representation of states.
After the American Revolution, America had earned it’s freedom from Britain. In order to govern this new country the Articles of Confederation was created. This document was flawed by the colonists fear of putting too much power into a central government. Knowing the document needed to be fixed a constitutional convention was called. The document created at this convention has been our constitution ever since. But even the Constitution was meet with criticism. One major concern when writing the constitution was how to protect the citizens rights. The Constitution did this through the preamble, the legislative process, the limit of presidential terms, the judicial branch, and the bill of rights.
This great country known as Canada, is governed smoothly because of the agreements and rules that have been in place since the beginning of confederation. The Canadian Constitution is one example of these rules. The Canadian Constitution is not just one single documentation, it is a collaboration of documents that make up one enormous document (Dyck 261). The six basic principles of the constitution are: responsible government, federalism, judicial review, the rule of law, constitutional monarchy and democracy; which all helped to shape the Constitution and therefore Canada (Dyck 266).
Although today in the twenty -first century we have more of a regulated federalism, the basic concepts of protection of individual rights along with free expression of ideas is still at the core of our current political philosophy. The founders intentions, primarily fueled by the Federalists, sought to create a national system under which the new area of democracy would thrive in the shadow of what they perceived to be an oppressive past with mother England.
Our Constitution establishes three branches of government and defines their very existence. The reason for the three branches is to separate the powers. The phrase “separation of powers” isn’t in the constitution, but it best explains the intention of the Constitution. It is essential that the assignment of lawmaking, enforcing and interpreting be spread out among the separated powers to ensure that all power doesn’t fall into the lap of one group, or even a power-hungry individual. The powers of which I’m speaking that were intentionally separated by way of the Constitution are the Legislative Branch, Executive Branch and finally, the Judicial Branch.
From the inception of the Constitution, there has always been a power struggle between the President and Congress. In the beginning, Madison and the Jeffersonians were placed in a gridlock with Hamilton and his school of political philosophy. Andrew Jackson fought to extend the powers of the President, then Congress spent 50 years fighting to repeal the powers of the Executive. Abraham Lincoln refined Jacksonian presidential politics, then Congress impeached his successor, Andrew Johnson, for fear of another quasi -- tyrannical President. Even today, a Congress, whose majority is of the same party as the President, fights 24 hours a day to check the power of President George W. Bush. But why, and how? Inherent Power Struggles Within the Constitution: Article I, Section I -- "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives" VS. Article II, Section I -- "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America" Article II, Section II -- "The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States" - The Founders' ambiguous and contradicting language sets the stage for a power struggle between the Executive and the Legislative branches - Being that the Founders were political masterminds, they realized that unique circumstances would demand some deviations from the restraints that the Constitution places on both the Executive and the Legislature - Founders anticipated that during times of crisis', the nation would need ...
The principle of separation of powers is laid out in Articles I, II, and III, in effort to avoid tyranny. It is a part of a system called check and balances. The check and balances play the roles of the three branches of government. This system was made so that no one branch will over power the other. The three branches come together and help one another by being independent of the other. The legislative branch consists of the Congress, the judicial branch consists of the courts, and the executive branch consists of the president. For an example, when a bill is in progress and the chief executive (president or governor) does not approve of it, he can reject legislation and return it to the legislature with reasons for the rejection. This is a process called veto power.
The United States government was founded on a written set of principles known as the Constitution. There have only been 17 amendments, or changes, since ratification. While the United States has evolved with time the role and function of the government, and the way the government guarantees civil rights and liberties, has also evolved. These changes have resulted from changing or broadening of the interpretation of the constitution. Although the core of the constitution has not changed, it has expanded and its interpretation has changed to keep up with societal demands.
Between 1787 and 1791 the Framers of the US Constitution established a system of government upon principles that had been discussed and partially implemented in many countries over the course of several centuries, but never before in such a pure and complete design, which we call a constitutional republic. Since then, the design has often been imitated, but important principles have often been ignored in those imitations, with the result that their governments fall short of being true republics or truly constitutional. The Framers of the Constitution tried very hard to design a system that would not allow any one person or group within the government to gain too much power. Personally, I think they succeeded. In order to guard against what one of the Founding Fathers called an "excess of democracy," the Constitution was built with many ways to limit the government's power. Among these methods were separating the three branches, splitting the legislature so laws are carefully considered, and requiring members of Congress to meet certain criteria to qualify for office. The Founders did leave a few problems along with their system.
As James Madison said, “The different governments will each control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” What James Madison is trying to say is that the central and state governments have enough power that they don’t control everything. The central government has enough power to help some of the country’s major needs, and the state government has enough power to help the state’s needs because the state’s needs may be more specific. From this, you may conclude, that dividing powers between the central and state governments prevents tyranny. The first guard against tyranny was Federalism, which means a system of government in which power is divided between a federal government and state government.
The United States government is designed with checks and balances to ensure that no one branch can become more powerful than another. Though this may be the case, it is still possible that one branch of the our government can still be more powerful than the others. The equality of power in our government has constantly changed over the course of the life of the United States. Although these changes have occurred, we still have not made all of the branches equal and the inequality has been due to meet the demands of the time. For example, in 1938 our country was facing a depression and nothing was getting done. So, Roosevelt took it upon himself to give the Executive branch more power, to then in turn, help the country creep back out of the hole it had dug itself. After the country didn’t need the reform bills and the size of the government that Roosevelt had put it, things were then downsized and put into a more stable equilibrium. Though there were attempts to make everything equal, the Legislative Branch now holds the majority of the power, and is the most powerful branch that our government has.
The founding fathers were quite concerned when writing the Constitution about what the breakdown of power should be. They did not want the central government to hold too much power like it had in England, but they needed a federal government stronger than the Articles of Confederation to keep the states together.