Legislative Sovereignty In America

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In today’s society, it is easy to look at politics and think of legislative sovereignty, meaning the legislature is the sovereign power, but this is surely not the case. Although it is true that the legislature makes the laws, one must ask themselves: what exactly is going on in the background? This is where the wealthy people of America come into play. The wealthy are in charge of the law-making process in some way at all times, defining them as the sovereign power in contemporary American society.
The wealthy have their hand in the legislature at all times which puts them in control over the laws that are being made; however, sometimes situations such as the New York bank crisis arise and the wealthy, in this case the banks, gain direct control
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White, William D. Kelley, a United States of America representative from Ohio during the Civil War, discussed the idea of “supreme law” (Congressional Globe 215). Kelly argued that the laws and “treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land” (Congressional Globe 215). While reading this argument, the idea of contemporary legislative sovereignty in America will likely become clearer. Also connecting with the principle of legislative sovereignty in the United States of America is James Madison who, in “Federalist Paper 51”, clearly defines the legislature as the sovereign branch of government in the United States of America when he says “In republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates” (Madison 204). All of these examples continue to prove that many philosophers in different centuries and different locations define sovereignty as the right to make the …show more content…
On the other hand, through the New York City bank crisis, the American citizens now have the ability to clearly see that the wealthy have direct power over all laws and policies being made; this is the idea of wealthy authoritative power in politics.
At the time, the majority of American citizens would say that the authoritative power is worse and would try to fight against it, but this is simply because of the fact that they were clueless that the wealthy had power over laws and policies even when it appeared that they did not. Americans were allowing themselves to be manipulated and were actually upset about the wealthy being directly in power. This is shown when Harvey says, “working-class New Yorkers reluctantly assented to the new realities” (Harvey

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