The Power Of The Three Branches Of Government

The three branches of government all have different roles in our government, The constitution includes checks and balances to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful, however, that does not mean that one branch does not have more power than another. In our government, there is a hierarchy of power. Congress, the legislative branch, is the most powerful of the three, the president, executive branch, is next in the order of most powerful, finished by the Supreme Court, judicial branch. Their powers each lie in different areas and there is a great separation of power as the framers intended, however, there are some aspects in which these branches overlap and that is where the different amounts of power can be observed. Congress is by far the most powerful of the three. In the constitution, the framers gave congress numerous enumerated powers, far more than the other two branches. These enumerated powers include the power to declare war, coin money, raise an army and navy, regulate commerce, establish uniform rules of immigration and naturalization,and establish federal courts and their jurisdictions. Congress also has the power of impeachment and the impeachment trial. In addition to those powers, Congress has the power to pass any additional laws that it may require to carry out its enumerated powers. …show more content…
If it violates the constitution the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review, this was first used in the case Marbury v. Madison (1803). A legislature that congress had passed expanded the Court’s authority, however, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote a letter explaining that one of the new powers he had received from that legislature was unconstitutional because Congress could not expand the Supreme Court’s authority without a constitutional