Explain the principle of the separation of powers found in the US Constitution. The separation of powers is the main underlying principle of the US Constitution whereby political power is distributed amongst the three branches of government – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The branches act both independently and interdependently. The idea was originally of French political thinker Baron de Montesquieu, it was then incorporated by the Founding Fathers into the 1787 codified document. The principle was adopted by the Founding Fathers due to their fear of totalitarianism.
(9 points) 3. Why did the Framers of the Constitution create a mechanism for amending the Constitution but then make it very difficult to actually make any changes? Answer: They knew that people would change along with the constitution so in order for it to be successful it had to mirror what was actually happening. As a result they made the process difficult so that common interest would not affect the constitution.
The guard of federalism is shown one way in the Constitution when they set up the compound government to make sure that the federal government doesn’t get too much power. The second way is when some responsibilities are given to the state government so that they can share the power equally. Federalism protects against tyranny because it ensures that the federal government doesn’t have too much to say in what happens in the country so that they don’t become too powerful and create tyranny. The second guard against tyranny was the separation of powers which means that the government is separated into separate branches so that they can spread out the power so that one branch of the government can have more pull in what happen in the decisions made
Freedom of assembly says that you must have a permit. Lastly, the freedom of petition is the standards established by the state. Amendments are formal changes in a bill, law, or constitution. These freedoms are believed to be the main and most important freedoms to U.S. citizens. The first amendment initially, only utilized the laws established by the Congress.
This essay will discuss Weber’s three ideal types of political authority in detail, relationships between these three types. Then it will give reasons why legal rational authority has become the dominant type in modern societies and identify some drawbacks of Weber’s political authority theory. Before discussing Weber’s three ideal types of political authority, it is important to find the reason why he generates these three types. As he argued that power is a too multidimensional form to define and therefore he specifically concentrates on domination and distinguishes two main types of it. One of them is the domination by the authority of office, which showed a strong need for obedience from power (Allen, 2004).
The Founding Fathers created three different branches of government. They did this to prevent tyranny and limit one individual or group from too much power. One reason for three branches is to prevent tyranny. Tyranny is cruel or oppressive government or rule. They created branches so they can all have control.
A constitution then, confers power and provides legitimacy for the state’s use and limits of power. Most written constitutions came about as a result of some political event. A written constitution also termed as an enacted constitution incorporates the rules and principles of the state in the form of a single written document and hence all other duly enacted laws must conform. It imposes limits on what may be done by ordinary legislation. An example is the American Constitution adopted by the founding fathers on September 17, 1787.
In essence, Montesquieu states that the three organs of government, the executive, legislature and judiciary should each have a discrete and defined area of power and that there should be a clear demarcation of functions between them. His quest was to find the best way of attaining civil liberties for the individual. He argued that if all the powers of the state were placed in one person or one organ, there will be dictatorship and this would result in abuse of civil liberties. Montesquieu started from a rather gloomy view of human nature, in which he saw man as exhibiting a general tendency towards evil, a tendency that manifests itself in selfishness, pride, envy, and the seeking after power. He argued that, although man is a reasoning animal, he is led by his desires into immoderate acts.
The Federalist 51 was an article created in 1788 by, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, stating that in order to have a more proper government structure the use of checks and balances is much needed. He starts off by saying each branch, legislative, executive, and judicial must be independent but all three should share the equal amount of power. The reason the three branch’s should have equal power is because it will only avoid the possibilities of democracy collapsing. He even states, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” This means that since each government will want to seek more power they will have to compete with each other like tug of war. However the other two will check the one wanting to exceed thus, balancing out the power and securing citizens from a dictatorship type of government.
Three Branches of United States Government Our founding fathers created three separate branches for a powerful and fair national government. They wanted to prevent the government from abusing its power. They did not want the powers of the government to be controlled by one individual or organization. The delegates at the Constitutional Convention were afraid that if an individual or small group received too much power, the United States would wind up under the rule of another dictator. They refused for that to happen because that’s the reason why they began the new world journey, they wanted something different from Great Britain.