The Importance Of The Separation Of Powers

One of the biggest threats to a thriving country is a tyrannical government. To prevent this, the Founders declared that the power of the government must be separated. This principle, the Separation of Powers, states that, to prevent tyranny, one governmental branch cannot have supremacy over the country. The power must be divided among three branches. These are the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. The Separation of Powers is of equal importance now as when the Constitution was written because it prevents tyranny. The Separation of Powers was important to our Founders because the mistreatment of the power that the colonists gave to their leader was evident. The colonists preferred to avoid a similar occurrence in their new country, where they felt that their leaders were violating their rights. In one of James Madison’s Federalist Papers, it states that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, judiciary, in the hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may be justly pronounced the very definition of tyranny…(L)iberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and

One example is the Attorney General’s office was caught spying on reporters, threatening the freedom of the press. This does not necessarily mean that the judicial branch is not sufficiently separated from the executive and judicial branches, but due to the separation of powers, checks and balances can be applied in this situation. Because the judicial branch took actions that violate American citizens’ constitutional rights by threatening the freedom of the press, the executive and legislative branches have the power to prevent the judicial branch from taking such actions again. They have the power to protect the rights of the people, and to protect the abuse of power by one branch of