Question

Considering the American experience and dissatisfaction with an all-powerful national government during colonialism and the lack of cohesion and national power under the Articles of Confederation, discuss how the U.S. Constitution creates a balance between state and national governments as well as a division of powers among the various branches of government.

Answer 1

he Separation of Powers devised by the framers of the Constitution was designed to do one primary thing: to prevent the majority from ruling with an iron fist. Based on their experience, the framers shied away from giving any branch of the new government too much power. The separation of powers provides a system of shared power known as Checks and Balances.

Three branches are created in the Constitution. The Legislative, composed of the House and Senate, is set up in Article 1. The Executive, composed of the President, Vice-President, and the Departments, is set up in Article 2. The Judicial, composed of the federal courts and the Supreme Court, is set up in Article 3.

Each of these branches has certain powers, and each of these powers is limited, or checked, by another branch.

For example, the President appoints judges and departmental secretaries. But these appointments must be approved by the Senate. The Congress can pass a law, but the President can veto it. The Supreme Court can rule a law to be unconstitutional, but the Congress, with the States, can amend the Constitution.

All of these checks and balances, however, are inefficient. But that's by design rather than by accident. By forcing the various branches to be accountable to the others, no one branch can usurp enough power to become dominant.

Executive power is vested in the President by the U.S. Constitution in Article 2. The principal responsibility of the President is to ensure that all laws are faithfully carried out. The President is the chief executive officer of the federal government. He is the leader of the executive branch and the commander in chief of the armed forces. He has the power to make treaties with other nations, with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate. The President also appoints, with Senate consent, diplomatic representatives, Supreme Court judges, and many other officials. Except impeachment, he also has the power to issue pardons and reprieves. Such pardons are not subject to confirmation by either house of Congress, or even to acceptance by the recipient. Another important power granted to the President is veto power over all bills, but Congress, as noted above, may override any veto except for a pocket veto by a two-thirds majority in each house. When the two houses of Congress cannot agree on a date for adjournment, the President may settle the dispute. Either house or both houses may be called into emergency session by the President. The judicial power—the power to decide cases and controversies—is vested in the Supreme Court and inferior court established by Congress. The following are the powers of the Judiciary: the power to try federal cases and interpret the laws of the nation in those cases; the power to declare any law or executive act unconstitutional. The power granted to the courts to determine whether legislation is consistent with the Constitution is called judicial review. The concept of judicial review is not written into the Constitution, but was envisioned by many of the framers. The Supreme Court established a precedent for judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. The precedent established the principle that a court may strike down a law it deems unconstitutional.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution saw checks and balances as essential for the security of liberty under the Constitution. They believed that by balancing the powers of the three governmental branches, the efforts in human nature toward tyranny could be checked and restrained. John Adams praised the balanced government as the “most stupendous fabric of human invention.” In his A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America (1787), he wrote, “In the mixed government we contend for, the ministers, at least of the executive power, are responsible for every instance of the exercise of it; and if they dispose of a single commission by corruption, they are responsible to a house of representatives, who may, by impeachment, make them responsible before a senate, where they may be accused, tried, condemned, and punished, by independent judges.” (Isaak 2004:103-104) So the system of checks and balances was established and became an important part of the U.S. Constitution. With checks and balances, each of the three branches of government can limit the powers of the others. This way, no one branch is too powerful. Each branch “checks” the powers of the other branches to make sure that the power is balanced between them. The major checks possessed by each branch are listed below.