ipl-logo

Three Branches Of Government

1212 Words5 Pages

The founding fathers created 3 branches because they felt that if the government had too much power that they would become power hungry, so they separated powers to keep everything equal so power couldn't corrupt.It was the best way they thought to have equal power in government.There would be three groups of power to decide different things in government and no group would have more power than another group. When the founding fathers wrote The Constitution of the United States of America, times were different and they knew things would change, so they wrote the document very fluently, allowing for changes to be made. Such as the fact that when they said all men are created equal, they were more likely than not, talking about all rich …show more content…

The framers of the Constitution did not wish to return to the totalitarian system of governance imposed on colonial America by the British government. To ensure that no single person or entity had a monopoly on power, the Founding Fathers designed and instituted a system of checks and balances. The president's power is checked by the Congress, which can refuse to confirm his appointees, for example, and has the power to impeach or remove, a president. Congress may pass laws, but the president has the power to veto them. And the Supreme Court can rule on the constitutionality of a law, but Congress, with approval from two-thirds of the states, may amend the Constitution …show more content…

This system was built so that no one branch of our government could become too powerful. Each branch is restrained by the other two in several ways. For example, the president may veto a law passed by Congress. Congress can override that veto with a vote of two-thirds of both houses. Another example is that the Supreme Court may check Congress by declaring a law unconstitutional. The power is balanced by the fact that members of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president. Those appointments have to be approved by Congress. As we have already seen our Constitution is very much a reaction to the events that came before it. Our founding fathers had several goals, foremost among those goals was to avoid tyranny. In order to do this several different systems were set up to prevent the abuse of power. Federalism was one of these systems. Federalism was designed to balance the power of the national and State governments and thus limit the powers of the national government. Jefferson and others were convinced that state government was closer to the people and thus more democratic.Another system that was developed was the system of checks and balances. Checks and balances, or the separation of powers, is based upon the philosophy of Baron de Montesquieu. In this system the government was to be divided into three branches of government, each branch having

Open Document