Separation of Powers in the Constitution

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Recommended: Merit and demerit of separation of powers

The Separation of Powers was simply created to establish a system of checks and balances so that no one particular division of the government could solely control all of our nations business. This makes is so the President does not have dictatorial control. Congress has a form of checked power so they cannot make unfair laws. The Judicial Branch is then not allowed to exceed the power that is given to them by law. It’s a system “Of the people, by the people, and for the people” allowing us as the people to be the unmentioned fourth branch of the government. Since we as a people elect our representatives, that allows us to change our form of government and provide the best checks and balances we can to our government and its processes. We have the uncanny ability to address issues to three separate branches of our government, ensuring that our freedoms will continue to survive because the real power remains in the hands of the governed. Our framers understood there needed to be a way for the people to be in control of our country which is the Separation of Powers. Madison wrote “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that…the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” This in a nutshell is the reasoning for the need to have the separation of powers. This practice had already been used in the colonies for more than 100 years. It was during the Revolutionary period that some of the states concentrate authority in the hands of the legislature, and that unhappy experience confirmed the framers belief in the merits of the separ... ... middle of paper ... ...ers carry the full force of the law. They can be major policy changes like withholding federal contracts from businesses that have engaged in racial discrimination, or they can be as simple as enacting days such as Earth Day. Executive privilege would be the right to confidentiality of executive communications, especially relating to national security. Impoundment is the power to send armed forces into hostilities; and the authority to propose legislation and work actively to secure its passage by Congress. So are framers knew what they were doing when the enacted the Constitution and the separation of power back in May of 1787 in Philadelphia. They knew that no matter how things changed we would be governed in a way that we could make changes as we went. Without the Constitution and separation of power one has to wonder what our world would be like today.

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