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The Separation Of Powers

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Separation of Powers
During the drafting of the United States Constitution at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a topic of most importance was the separation of power amongst the three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive. Following the end of the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of essays known as the Federalist Papers promoting the ratification of the constitution. In it, they responded to the critique presented by the people known as the anti-federalist. In Federalist Papers No. 47-49 & 51, James Madison addresses the need to establish the separation of powers, but to further develop them with a system of checks and balances that would help maintain …show more content…

Were it joined with executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of the oppressor” and that “there can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body of magistrates” or “if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers” (294-95). When legislative and powers are united there can be no liberty. However Madison says that the anti-federalist misinterpreted Montesquieu’s idea. Madison says that Montesquieu “did not mean that [the] departments ought to have no partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other.” (Madison 1788, 295) When looking at the British Constitution that Montesquieu was alluding to in his writings, Madison took note that although they had employed the idea of separation of powers, they occasionally overlapped. Montesquieu simply meant that allowing a concentration of all legislative, judicial, and executive power to rest in one unbalanced and more powerful branch would lead to …show more content…

Aside from specific rules and boundaries, there must also be overlap amongst the branches. The clear lines are drawn to protect the branches from one another but Madison believes that “unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to free government, can never in practice be duly maintained” (Madison 1788, 300). Unless the branches are connected and give each a constitutional control over the others we cannot maintain the separation essential to free government. The anti-federalist believed that the framing of the state constitution just stating the boundary lines between the branches was enough but something stronger is

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