The Constitution gave Congress the power to impeach and remove officials, including judges or the President himself. The President was given the veto power to restrain Congress and the authority to appoint members of the Supreme Court with the advice and consent of the Senate. In this intricate system, the role of the Supreme Court had not been defined. It therefore fell to a strong Chief Justice like Marshall to complete the triangular structure of checks and balances by
The Constitution was written to bring forth a functioning sense of the three branches and hence a strict demarcation of power is the aim sought to be achieved by this principle. The constitution signifies the fact that one person or one body should not excess all the three powers of the government. A French scholar by the name of Montesquieu found that concentration of power in one person or a group results in tyranny. Montesquieu felt the need for decentralization of power to check arbitrariness. He felt the need to divide the government’s power into three branches.
In May of 1787 fifty-five individuals gathered for the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. The issue that was discussed in this convention was how the constitution guard's against tyranny, or absolute power in the hands of one person or party. Many solutions were discussed however I believe that separation of powers, and federalism provided the best protection against tyranny. Federalism was the stepping stone used when it came to solving the problem of preventing tyranny. James madison said "hence a double security arises to the rights of people the different government's will each control each other ,and at the same time each will be controlled by themselves" which simply states that Federalism prevented tyranny by dividing the power between the nation and the state.
The weapon of the LegCo is to veto government bills, or to turn down the requests for financial appropriation by the executive government. After all, our LegCo does not exercise a genuine legislative power but a veto power. It actually plays a much stronger monitoring rather than legislative and policymaking role. In order to ensure that the legislators would pass the bills or the financial requests, officials have to persuade the elected representatives and their parties to accept government proposals, resulting in bargaining and compromise. Our elected legislators do not have to be responsible for the effectiveness of policies.
The Supreme Court is both a judicial and political body. The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that the judges or justices of the Supreme Court would be truly independent of both the executive and legislative branches (this is in line with the principle of separation of powers). Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed not elected this is because they wanted the Court to be beyond the control of the electorate. The founding fathers wanted a genuinely independent Supreme Court that would settle legal disputes without fear of possible reprisal or that would bend to the whim of the electorate. There are nine member of the Supreme Court including a chief justice, the number is fixed by congress and has remained unchanged since 1869.
However, both principles function under one principle which is checks and balances. The second part of the U.S. Constitution focuses on individual rights and liberties. However, we will only be discussing the first part of the Constitution in this essay. The framers of the U.S. Constitution wanted to prevent the concentration of power into the hands of one individual, or even one group of individuals, within the national government. In order to accomplish their goal they decided it was necessary to divide the governmental functions into three: legislative, judicial, and executive.
Pornography requires a government grant. Of course all these laws are in place for a reason, but it goes to disprove the misguided views of those who believe Americans are truly free. Well....America was formed on the idea that religion and speech should not be controlled by the government. The success of the American revolution motivated the French to overthrow there government, the basic ideas of the constitution, (seperation of powers, freedom of speech) [originally european thinkers' ideals] were the
In the American government, and many others alike, there are taxes you must pay. In Thoreau's time he was arrested for choosing to not pay his general taxes. He paid school and medical taxes, but refused to pay general taxes because he did not support slavery and the Mexican war, which was undoubtedly where the general taxes was going. The problem that Thoreau is addressing is the ability of the government to do such things. In his eyes the people should support only what they want to support, nothing more or less.
The Rule of Law and Relevance in Contemporary Society Dicey is a committed believer of the free market operation and was opposed to any for of intervention by the State to regulate the economy. It is least arguable that at the time Dicey wrote his 'Law of the Constitution', he was trying to represent change which in fact had occurred in the UK polity. Sir Ivor Jennings, in his book 'The Law and the Constitution' expressed that Dicey's version of the rule of law means "that the State exercises only the functions of carrying out external relations and maintaining order", which is not true as it would mean that if the State ought to exercise these functions only, it is a rule of policy for Whigs (Whigs were former political party). Social thinker Friedrich Von Hayek followed Dicey in emphasizing its essential component as the absence of arbitrary power in the hands of the State. According to Hayek in his "The Road to Sefrdom": "Stripped of all technicalities, the rule of law means that government in all its actions is bound by rules and announced beforehand."
INTRODUCTION The doctrine of separation of powers is political in nature and is not a legal principle. Despite this obvious fact, the importance of this theory cannot be over emphasised. This doctrines origin is most associated with the French writer Baron de Montesquieu but also can be traced to ancient Greece especially in the work of Aristotle titled ‘‘Politics’’[1]. Separation of Powers is essential to the organisation of a state and to the concept of constitutionalism. Montesquieu in his book ‘‘The Spirit of the Laws’’ in one of the chapters entitled ‘‘On The Constitution of England’’ expressed himself clearly on this doctrine ‘‘when legislative power is united with executive power in a single body of the magistracy, there is no liberty...nor there is liberty if the power of judging is not separate from legislative power and from executive power... all would be lost if the same man or the same body of...people exercised these three powers...making the laws...executing and that of judging...’’.