To what extent can the Legislative and Judicial branches of the American Federal Government limit the powers of the President? The Constitution of the United States divides the federal government into three branches. The legislative branch makes the laws, Executive branch carries out the laws and lastly the Judicial branch evaluates the laws. The Founding Fathers were dubious of one person or group from exerting too much power.
The Articles of the Confederation was the first government constitution that the United States used, and, although there were strength like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, there were major weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation like the following: requiring 9 out of the 13 colonial votes from the representatives from different states to pass a law; having no executive and judicial branch; and the federal government being unable to impose tax revenue onto the states. Such flaws would eventually lead to the Constitution and the repeal of the articles, for the Constitution was a measure to fix the problems of the articles with a stronger government that allowed them to impose taxes and and implement new laws for a more effective government.
In addition, the executive branch was responsible for enforcing or vetoing laws passed by Congress (in addition to its other powers). As for the judiciary, it is responsible for interpreting federal laws and the constitution and for overseeing the decisions made by the federal and state courts. Before when it was unable to address economic and boundary disputes, the judiciary under the constitution was able to address a wide range conflicts. Above all, these three branches of government share equal power to prevent one form of government from becoming too
Have you ever wondered why we aren’t ruled by single tyrant? A tyrant is one individual who holds all the power over a group of people. The question this essay will answer is how did the constitution protect against one person or group of people from having too much power. The constitution guards against tyranny through federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and big states vs. small states.
Some of the officials that hold high work occupations in the national government is the President and Vice President. Jurisdiction of making laws in the national government is an vital point that makes this government prove its high position, since best intentions for the country is the most critical when it involves issuing national laws that can also affect other local governments. Due to separation of powers, each state is in charge of their state branches for their government. The details of executive branch of government in California is to create laws that the Legislature wants to act out and execute. The role for the state of California 's legislative is the difficult job of passing and creating laws.
The Congress members introduce bills for review, approval and debates. The Congress committee may reject or approve the proposal at its initial introduction stage. If the president vetoes the bill, the legislature can try to override the veto (Brandt, 2011, pg. 20).
In document C there are the 3 branches of government and arrows pointing from one to the other telling us how each branch checks one another. Some of these are, the president can veto different laws if he does not like them, but Congress can override this veto and pass the law anyways if they have a majority vote to override it. The Courts can declare acts of either branch as unconstitutional. Congress can also impeach members of any other branch and can remove them from office. All of this means that whatever one branch does, it must go through the other two so no corrupt laws can be passed.
This was their way of checking each other making them agree on any laws before passing them. This also gave the President the power to veto any acts of congress. This gave us the federal Structure of the government. The House of Representatives were elected by the people. On the 17th of September 1778 thirty nine delegates signed the Constitution though Ben Franklin said (“Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure it is not the best”)
The Constitution set a government composed of three branches, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Each branch was given a certain power over one another to ensure that no one branch overcame the other power (Document G). The state legislatures would elect the members of the Senate, as well as select delegates to the Electoral College, which selected the president. And the president would appoint the judges in the Supreme Court, which they have the power to declare executive actions unconstitutional and impeach the president if necessary. Despite checks and balances, the Anti-Federalists considered that these branches composed of Elites, and were afraid that Elites would grant the too much power among the branches.
Federalism helped the Constitution guard against tyranny by specifying which powers belong to the Federal government and which ones belong to the State government. This separation leads to a double security so that the state government can watch the federal government and the federal can watch the state. James Madison states in his Federalist Papers #51(Document A), “power surrendered by the people is first divided between two
The constitution attempts to evenly distribute powers between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government by providing the president or the commander-in-chief the power to control and supervise the military upon approval by congress, who have the power to declare war and to support the armed forces. The subject of debate regarding the act is whether the president has the authority to send military troops to war without congressional approval. The way the war powers act was written makes it difficult to decipher approximately how much power is the president privileged in the war-making process. According to the constitution congress have the powers to authorize war by formally granting letters that verify and confirm the
As seen in Document A, it compares the Articles and the Constitution. For the executive branch, (the Constitution) had president administrators that enforce federal laws while (the Articles) only takes care when the Congress is not there. For the legislative branch, (the Constitution) a bicameral legislature where each state has equal representation in the Senate and each state has proportional representation in the House of Representatives thus fixing the issue of representation for small and large states. The Articles had a unicameral legislature where each state has one vote no matter what population they had which was unfair for the small states. The Constitution had a national court system that hears different cases while the Articles didn’t have that at all.
Another key contrast for the president from a monarch was in the fact that the president was first not only “elected by fellow citizens, [but also] subject to potential impeachment” (Amar, p. 145). Through its Constitution America broke all traditions for previous important heads of government such as shown in “British law [which] had no regularized legal [way] for ousting a bad king” (Amar, p. 199). Amar goes on to implicitly state that “the monarch himself was immune from impeachment” (Amar, p. 199). The goal for America was to differ from the way that Europe passed power through heredity without the need for or basis of merit. One way Article II of the Constitution specifically aimed to prohibit the immediate passing from father to son was through an age requirement set at thirty-five, which also gave those voting for a candidate time to judge his worthiness.
The use of these powers determine if the president is going beyond the limits of the office. Many argue that the president has abused these powers with the use of the Unitary Executive Theory, which states that the Constitution puts the president in charge of executing the laws, and that nobody can limit the president’s power when it comes to executive powers. It therefore tips authority from Congress to the presidency, upsetting the power of checks and balances.
The delegates wrote this Constitution with tyranny in mind; how could the Constitution guard against one person or group from gaining too much power? The Constitution protects against tyranny because the 55 delegates established: federalism, separation of powers, checks & balances, and equal representation. Federalism helps guard against tyranny by making sure not one government has too much power. In Document A, it is clearly stated that James Madison, a main contributor to the Constitution, wanted “[a] compound republic of America” to provide a “double security” for our rights. As both central and state governments in the compound republic have different functions, this helps keep our states in a union while letting the states stay independent.