Interbranch Relations Essay

Throughout history, there have typically been shifts from harmony to conflict between the three branches of American government. The framers of the Constitution created the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government in order to form a system of checks and balances to prevent a single area of the government from becoming too powerful. This system of checks and balances has been accompanied by vast amounts of discord throughout its existence. The shifts in interbranch relations can be seen through Congressional deference prior to and during the beginning of the Vietnam War, Congressional resurgence after the Vietnam War, and a shift back to Congressional deference following the attacks of 9/11. During the beginning of the Vietnam War, the President and Congress typically agreed upon foreign policies. Congress gave permission to President Lyndon B. Johnson to deploy additional troops to Vietnam with the Gulf of Tonkin

The U.S. Supreme Court would frequently dismiss complaints from Congress related to foreign relations because they were considered to be “political questions” (Hook 115). Congress sometimes used the courts to attempt to punish or restrict the presidents. An example of a case was Goldwater et al. v. Carter. In this case, “…the Supreme Court supported President Jimmy Carter’s right to terminate the U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan. In the Court’s view, the case was ‘political’ because no clear violations of the Constitution had occurred” (Hook 116). Another example of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the president came in a series of cases, Crockett v. Reagan and Lowry v. Reagan. In these cases, “…the Court again dismissed as ‘political’ congressional claims that the president had overstepped his constitutional bounds by deploying troops in conflict overseas” (Hook 116). The Supreme Court was consistently dismissing Congress’