John Locke - Separation of Powers
"Separation
of
Powers"
Separation of powers is the act of separating of responsibilities of the three branches of the
government. The idea of this separation is not a new one either. John Locke originally talked
about it. He stated that the legislative power should be divided between the King and
Parliament in England. Another man also spoke about this separation, the French writer
Montesquieu, who wrote about it in 1748 in his book De l'esprit des lois. His point was that
liberty is most effective if it is safeguarded by the separation of powers. He highly promoted
liberty. As in the Encyclopedia Britannica, it stated that Montesquieu felt that liberty is most
highly promoted when there are three branches of government acting independently of each
other. Although his model for the three-branch government was for England, it became more
important to the United States. His work was most notably shown in America when the
Constitution was being created. Finally, Alexander Hamilton raised his point on separation of
powers in the series of essays called The Federalist. The Encyclopedia Encarta said that he
wrote this with James Madison and John Jay and that there were 85 essays all together. They
were written about how they wanted the new government to run. It was their view as to how
each major department in the new central government should run. More specifically, they
stated how the three branches of government should run and expounded the idea of judicial
review.
The way that the power is separated in the United States was that the legislative branch makes
the laws, the executive branch executes the laws and the judicial branch interprets the laws.
However, as our book and the Encyclopedia Britannica both state, the executive branch in the
United States has gained a lot more power. They both claim this because of numerous changes
in
social
and
economic
life.
The idea of checks and balances is closely related to the idea of separation of powers. Checks
and balances is the idea that each branch of the government has ways to make sure that each
other branch does not gain too much power. Instead, each branch is encouraged to share
power with the other. Again, our book and the Encyclopedia Britannica both say that the way
that this works is that the courts have judicial review, which is the power of the courts to
examine both the executive and legislative branches to make sure that they are doing, is
constitutional. Congress has the power to impeach people from both the judicial and executive
branches. Plus they have the power to appropriate funds. Finally, the executive branch has the
power to veto bills passed by Congress. However, this can be overridden by a 2/3-majority vote
in Congress. However, a new concept helps the President, he can line item veto, which means
he can blank out certain parts of the bill so it does not have to totally written.
The idea of separation of powers is what separates us from Great Britain in the way we run our
democracy. In England, the legislative executive branches are integrated. This idea is reinforced
with the idea that they should be in constant agreement. It is pretty obvious that they are not
in constant agreement here. This can happen because Congress may have a republican majority
yet
the
president
and
his
cabinet
may
be
democratic.
The idea is separation of powers is even related to Federalism as a whole. According to the
Grolier Encyclopedia, federalism is directly related to the separation of powers. However, it is
related to the separation between the state and national government. It said that each level of
government is autonomous from the other. Also, neither is dependent on the other for
legislation,
taxes
or
administration.
The idea of separation of powers has been around for a long time. Our newly founded
government decided to use it as a base when writing the Constitution. Its main ideas are
related to other aspects of our government such as checks and balances. Its ideals have
changed a little bit because now the executive branch has a bit more power, but for the most
part it has stayed intact. This concept also relates to the separation between the states and the
national government. Each state government is separate from the national government. From
the original ideas of Hamilton, Locke, and Montesquieu has come the type of government we
have today.