Constitutional Republic
Between 1787 and 1791 the Framers of the US Constitution established a system of government upon principles that had been discussed and partially implemented in many countries over the course of several centuries, but never before in such a pure and complete design, which we call a constitutional republic. Since then, the design has often been imitated, but important principles have often been ignored in those imitations, with the result that their governments fall short of being true republics or truly constitutional. The Framers of the Constitution tried very hard to design a system that would not allow any one person or group within the government to gain too much power. Personally, I think they succeeded. In order to guard against what one of the Founding Fathers called an "excess of democracy," the Constitution was built with many ways to limit the government's power. Among these methods were separating the three branches, splitting the legislature so laws are carefully considered, and requiring members of Congress to meet certain criteria to qualify for office. The Founders did leave a few problems along with their system.
Separation of power was very effective. The three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) are kept separate, and each has different powers. Congress has legislative, or law making, powers. Legislative powers are further divided between two legislative bodies. The President has the power to carry out, or execute, the laws. Lastly, the Judicial branch had the judging power, used to interpret the laws. Some powers were delegated to the central national government, while others are reserved to the component states or the people. In additi...
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...present day. The main problem with the system that our forefathers created is that sometimes, checks and balances are too slow, cumbersome and intertwined. It can hinder processes that should go quickly and easily. Separation of powers worked very well, but again, occasionally matters can become too separated and cause more problems and strife than the Founders could have realized. This is by no way their fault, adapting the government to its changing situation is our responsibility, not the Founders.
The Founding Fathers limit the power of government in the Constitution utilizing many different tactics, many more than even the aforementioned. Their main intent was to make the nation less democratic and to keep the government small. The Constitution has accomplished the Founding Fathers' goal until now, and will hopefully continue doing so in the future.
Separation of power prevents the power from falling all into the hands of one or a few and therefore having tyranny. (Madison FP # 47) It prevents this by having the U.S Government split into three branches, Legislative Branch (Congress), Executive Branch (President), Judicial Branch (The Courts). The Con...
You little tyrant king george off with your head.Since the Americans had a bad experience with one person having too much power they made a constitution that guarded against tyranny by, dividing power, making the branches able to check or limit each other, and dividing power between big and little states.
The separation of powers keeps any one branch from gaining too much power by creating 3 separate, distinct branches power can be shared equally among. According to Madison, “Liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct.”(Document B) In other words, to avoid tyranny and achieve liberty, the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) must be separate and diverse. The purpose of a separation of powers is to divide the powers of the government so there is not only one central source of power. The three branches must be as distinct as possible to avoid falling into the hands of one individual leader. There are also checks and balances between these three branches. Checks and balances are a system of each branch monitoring an...
All of the framer of the U.S. Constitution had one thing in common, they all felt that the government didn't have enough power. At the same time they didn't want to give the government to much power. They all knew if there was power to be held someone was going to hold it and over use it The framers didn't want to create a system like Britain or England.
The scenes in creation being intellectual, the put together of constitutional democracy was very empirical. The Constitutional Convention was convened to formulate the constitution. What had to be clear was that the only way to assure a functioning constitutional democracy was the public's discussion. In philadelphia the delegates compromised. The outcome was to integrate states with large populations and states with small populations with a bicameral legislative branch. Also compromises that guaranteed say from both slave owning states and non-slave states could be listened to. The Bill of Rights
George Mason explains that when a man has power, he does not use that power with discernment. Once that power is in his hands, he will only crave for more. The nature of power to man is to utilize that power and gain more and more. Mankind are selfish and will only focus on their interests first and forget about the interests of people. A man will do whatever it takes to gain that power. Power is like an addiction, once you acquire a little bit of it, you will only want more. In summarization, man is currently power-hungry and has been power hungry from the beginning of time and will continue to be power-hungry till the end of ages. For this a government is needed and a constitution that all people will be able to comply with and this is the biggest safeguard. Everyone, regardless of their position will have to follow the constitution. The constitution keeps everything fair and is a good safeguard because with this no one will be oppressed and no one will be able to get too powerful either, so it's balanced and fair to everyone. Today this system is valid, because in the current news you can see that people are still very power-hungry and
Assuring the people, both Alexander Hamilton and James Madison insisted the new government under the constitution was “an expression of freedom, not its enemy,” declaring “the Constitution made political tyranny almost impossible.” (Foner, pg. 227) The checks and balances introduced under the new and more powerful national government would not allow the tyranny caused by a king under the Parliament system in Britain. They insisted that in order achieve a greater amount of freedom, a national government was needed to avoid the civil unrest during the system under the Articles of Confederation. Claiming that the new national government would be a “perfect balance between liberty and power,” it would avoid the disruption that liberty [civil unrest] and power [king’s abuse of power in England] caused.
Before the adoption of the United States Constitution, the U.S. was governed by the Articles of Confederation. These articles stated that almost every function of the government was chartered by the legislature known as Congress. There was no distinction between legislative or executive powers. This was a major shortcoming in how the United States was governed as many leaders became dissatisfied with how the government was structured by the Articles of Confederation. They felt that the government was too weak to effectively deal with the upcoming challenges. In 1787, an agreement was made by delegates at the Constitutional Convention that a national judiciary needed to be established. This agreement became known as The Constitution of the United States, which explicitly granted certain powers to each of the three branches of the federal government, while reserving other powers exclusively to the states or to the people as individuals. It is, in its own words, “the supreme Law of the Land” (Shmoop Editorial Team).
Aristotle’s theory of mixed constitutions played a big role in influencing the new American mixed constitution and the concept of separation of powers. In this theory, Aristotle asserted that all types of government could work effectively if the leaders of these types of government pursue justice and public good over their self-interest. With this idea, the Founders established a brand new system of government by combining three types of government: the monarchy (the President), the aristocracy (the Supreme Court), and the democracy (Congress) into one. The concept of separation of powers was also born with this idea. This system consisted of three branches: the legislative branch (makes law), the executive branch (enforces law), and the judicial
The United States government is designed with checks and balances to ensure that no one branch can become more powerful than another. Though this may be the case, it is still possible that one branch of the our government can still be more powerful than the others. The equality of power in our government has constantly changed over the course of the life of the United States. Although these changes have occurred, we still have not made all of the branches equal and the inequality has been due to meet the demands of the time. For example, in 1938 our country was facing a depression and nothing was getting done. So, Roosevelt took it upon himself to give the Executive branch more power, to then in turn, help the country creep back out of the hole it had dug itself. After the country didn’t need the reform bills and the size of the government that Roosevelt had put it, things were then downsized and put into a more stable equilibrium. Though there were attempts to make everything equal, the Legislative Branch now holds the majority of the power, and is the most powerful branch that our government has.
Throughout history, there has been countless times where a country is ran by tyranny, and countless times where tyranny negatively affects the country. Our country, the United States of America, was one of those countries at one point, but we thankfully got out of it from war. Since our country didn’t want to go back to tyranny, people had to create a system, and a set of principles that would prevent that from happening. So, the Constitution was made. Tyranny is a government ran by one person, or a small amount of people, and the United States got out of it, but we still had to establish a way to prevent it from happening again. The constitution did it’s job and protected against tyranny by the small states vs. large states, federalism, separation of power, and checks and balances.
After breaking free from the British tyranny in 1776, America was built on the principles of independence and freedom. The weakness of the first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, proved that the United States needed some form of a strong central government. However, this created an issue due to the fact that the new Americans were scared that there would be a repeat of the oppression they faced with Britain (History Staff). The solution was to create a government that was able to restrict itself from gaining too much power, while also simultaneously being able to maintain its strength. The solution was found by adding a few principles in the foundation of the American governmental system. First off, the concept of being able
The men who wrote the American constitution agreed with Thomas Hobbes that humans were naturally evil. Therefore, they agreed that in order to prevent a dictatorship or monarchy, the citizens should have influence in the government. The writers wanted a more ideal constitution, but they realized evil human motives would never change. One of the main goals of the constitution was to create a balanced government that would allow the citizens to prevent each other from being corrupt. The writers wanted to give citizens liberty, but they did not want to give people so much liberty that they would have an uncontrollable amount of power. The writers agreed that a citizen’s influence in government would be proportionate to that individual’s property.
The framer of the constitution created a limited government which lasts for two hundred and more years. Constitution is the founding stone of our nation’s political system. People say the government of U.S is a limited government. It has power, but the power is restricted by law, no matter in state or federal.
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.