Tyranny. It was what the colonists of America were escaping when they left Britain. A tyrannical government is infamous for completely revoking the rights of the people. This is why the Framers wrote the Constitution. They did everything possible to create a government that would protect the people’s rights. For example, James Madison, famously known as the author of the Constitution, wrote about topics such as federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and other subjects in his series of essays called The Federalist. All of these subjects were written about later in the Constitution, in a desperate attempt to protect the newly created United States, from another tyranny. The Constitution guarded against a tyranny by stating specifically
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If all three powers were in the same hands, then a group of a small number of people would have every power, such as creating laws, enforcing laws, and deciding if they are constitutional. By separating these three sections of government into three, equally powered branches, no person or group of people would have an overwhelming and dominating amount of power. This spread out the power, which annihilated the chance of the government invalidating the rights of the people. Separation of powers was only half of the solution. The other part to this was checks and balances.“…the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that they may be a check on the other…. [The three branches] should not be so far separated as to have no constitutional control over each other,” wrote Madison in Federalist Paper 51 (Doc C). The main idea of checks and balances was that the three separated branches would have the each have powers limiting the others, such as the legislative branch having the ability to make laws, but the judicial branch would decide if the law is constitutional and the president, who pertains to the executive branch, has the power of vetoing the newly passed law. Checks and balances, alongside the separation of powers, provided even more protection against tyranny because not only did it further distribute power, it
If all three powers were in the same hands, then a group of a small number of people would have every power, such as creating laws, enforcing laws, and deciding if they are constitutional. By separating these three sections of government into three, equally powered branches, no person or group of people would have an overwhelming and dominating amount of power. This spread out the power, which annihilated the chance of the government invalidating the rights of the people. Separation of powers was only half of the solution. The other part to this was checks and balances.“…the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that they may be a check on the other…. [The three branches] should not be so far separated as to have no constitutional control over each other,” wrote Madison in Federalist Paper 51 (Doc C). The main idea of checks and balances was that the three separated branches would have the each have powers limiting the others, such as the legislative branch having the ability to make laws, but the judicial branch would decide if the law is constitutional and the president, who pertains to the executive branch, has the power of vetoing the newly passed law. Checks and balances, alongside the separation of powers, provided even more protection against tyranny because not only did it further distribute power, it