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Separation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others.
Separation of powers requires a different source of legitimization, or a different act of legitimization from the same source, for each of the separate powers. If the legislative branch appoints the executive and judicial powers, as Montesquieu indicated, there will be no separation or division of its powers, since the power to appoint carries ...
Montesquieu's treatise, already widely disseminated, had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America.
Montesquieu's philosophy that "government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another" [17] reminded Madison and others that a free and stable foundation for their new national government required a clearly defined and balanced separation of powers. Montesquieu was troubled by a cataract and feared going blind.
In his The Spirit of Law, Montesquieu maintained that the separation of state powers should be by its service to the people's liberty: legislative, executive and judicial, [94] [95] while also emphasizing that the idea of separation had for its purpose the even distribution of authority among the several branches of government. [96]
Secondly, the idea of separation of powers is another theory about how a democratic society's government should be organized. In contrast to legislative supremacy, the idea of separation of powers was first introduced by Montesquieu; [2] it was later institutionalized in the United States by the Supreme Court's ruling in Marbury v.
seize too much power. Not so exciting: this sounded like “checks and balances” in a bureaucratic turf war. Our teachers failed to explain to us that the power that the Founders restrained in each branch of government is not abstract: it is the power to strip you and me of personal liberty. So I needed to go back and read, more deeply than I ...
Concepts that originated in the Roman constitution live on in both forms of government to this day. Examples include checks and balances, the separation of powers, vetoes, filibusters, quorum requirements, term limits, impeachments, the powers of the purse, and regularly scheduled elections.