Three Branches Of The Federal Government

The Federal government is divided into three branches, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judiciary branch. The common thread that binds all three branches together is its obligation to protect the American people and their individual rights. This is evident in Supreme Court cases such as Loving v. Virginia (1967), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003), in which state legislatures and laws infringed on individuals rights based on political and regional influences. The distribution of power is inevitable due to the Judiciary Act that granted the Federal Supreme Court to interpret and rule on the basis of the Constitution in order to better protect the peoples. Hence, the federal government should retain the most power because

For example, in the case of 1973’s Roe v. Wade, the public opinion on the legalization of abortion two years later in 1975 was quite low compared to today’s statistics. According to Gallup’s survey, 21% of the population believed that abortion should be legal under any circumstance, 22% of the population believed that abortion should be illegal under any circumstance, while 54% of the population believed abortion should be legal under certain circumstances. Compared to today’s statistics where political parties and regions tend to influence the public opinion. For instance, when asked whether or not they approved abortion, 63% Democrats and 28% Republicans voted pro-choice, and 29% Democrats and 67% Republicans voted pro-life. Regional influences also play a role in statistics in that in the East, Midwest, and West voters who voted pro-choice were on average 45% or higher and those in the South voted 52% pro-life, which was the highest percentage compared to the remaining regions averaging below 45%. This voter turn out was the basis of the 1973 Roe v. Wade case because of a Texan law that criminalized abortion, which can be seen in the Southern region whose voter turn out for pro-life was 52%. A 7-2 Supreme Court decision voted in favor of Roe stating that the Texan law acted against the Constitution’s first, fourth, ninth, and fourteenth amendment that

Texas (2003) which decided whether homosexual acts should be legal or not. According to Gallup, 63% Democrats and 50% Republicans voted in favor of legalizing same-sex intercourse and 33% Democrats and 47% Republicans voted against same sex-intercourse. With a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court declared that Texan law of homosexual conduct was unconstitutional and overturned the conviction of Lawrence and his partner Garner for being arrested by the Texan police force for having sexual intercourse in their home. Similar to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court decided that the sodomy laws were unconstitutional because they violated Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause. In a PBS article, Alex McBride explains the ruling stating that the sodomy laws violated an individual’s right to privacy and right to freely engage in consensual, adult