Words: 1981
The Framers believed their most important action in preventing the tyranny in the United States was to separate the powers among three branches. They wanted to create a stronger national government but they also wanted to guard against possible misuse of that power. One of the key concept was the Separation of Powers. It was a method to allow each of the branches to affect the actions of the others and that method was known as the “check and balances” systems. The French political thinker Montesquieu was the one who advocated the key concept that the power needed to be balanced to against tyranny.
His writing, especially his major work, The spirit of the Laws, “were taken as political gospel” at the Philadelphia Convention [1]. It was also the main idea in shaping the three- branch and the “check and balance” system that America’s Founders outlined in the Constitution of 1787. Check and balance described how each branch is given not only its own powers but also some power over the other two branches, each branch should not able to get too much power and get too far out of control. Among the most common check and balance is the president can veto the bills. First, the congress introduces and votes on a bill.
Then, the bill goes to the executive branch, the president decides whether the bill is effective for the country. If he agrees, the bill will pass and it becomes a law. If the president disagree on what the bill says, he can veto the bill. However, the legislature can override the bill with two- third of the Senate, so the bill is still becomes a law. The bill then is tested by the people through the court system. In particular, the Supreme Court is signed jurisdiction over controversies between citizens. If they found the law is unfair, the Supreme Court can declare law unconstitutional.
The first presidential veto in 1792 when George Washington vetoes a bill about how congress divided seats in the House of Representative among states, and the first override on March 1845. The second concept was how the government made an appointment. The Executive branch can make appointments to the federal Judiciary, federal executive departments, and other posts with the advice and consent of the Senate. He also has power to make temporary appointment during the recess of the Senate. Thus, the Senate has the power of advise and consent on presidential appointments, federal judiciary and can therefore reject an appointee.
They can also reject to ratify treaties. When the president is impeached, the congress has a right to impeach by the House of Representative and remove the president by the Senate while the chief justice presides over impeachment of president. He or she moderates over Senator during hearing to impeach the president. In historical, we had two president had been impeached by the House of Representative but they were discharged by the Senator. They were president Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton. The Judiciary resigned before the House of Representatives could vote on any articles. Since the entire House did not vote, Nixon was never impeached.
In the time in war, the president in the commander and chief of the arm forces, which is an important position. The Framers afraid that the president would be given too much power so they gave the Congress the power to declare war. Moreover, the Congress also in charges the war budget and pay for the wartime expenses. According to Article Ill, No explicit mention is made in the Constitution of Judicial eview, meaning it can overturn laws it rules to be unconstitutional, this is the power of the court to review or declare actions of the Congress and the president invalid. The Supreme Court asserted this power in Marbury v.
Madison (1803)[2]. The case resulted from a petition by William Marbury, who applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus to compel James Madison to deliver the commissions. The Court found firstly that Madison’s refusal to deliver the commission was both illegal and remediable. However, the Court stopped short of compelling Madison (by writ of andamus) to hand over Marbury’s commission, instead holding that the provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that enabled Marbury to bring his claim to the Supreme Court was itself unconstitutional. The petition was therefore denied.
In more than two century, the Court has concluded that only some 160 acts of Congress directly violate the Constitution. For example, in 2007 and 2010, the high Court struck down key portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, through which Congress had sought to regulate spending in political campaign [3]. Thus, neither Congress nor the resident has any power to override a Supreme Court decision, but the executive and legislative branches still have the power to check and balance the Judicial branch. The Congress can change the size of federal court system and the number of Supreme Court Justices.
He or she also can impeach and remove the federal Judges. Every member in Supreme Court have been selected by the president, and the Senate also has to approve of the nomination. In addition, the legislative also conducts investigations into president’s action and refuses to pass laws or to prove funding that president request. Vice-president can cast tie-breaking vote to the Senate. The Judges can declare executive actions unconstitutional. They can determines how laws should be interpreted to ensure uniform policies in a top-down fashion through the appeals process, but gives discretion in individual cases to low-level Judges.
The amount of discretion depends upon the standard of review, determined by the type of case in question. The president has the power to declare the states of emergency and publishes regulation and “executive order”. Although there was neither constitutional nor state that ermits executive order, there is a vague grant of “executive power” given in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution. The executive issues the executive order to help officer and agencies in executive branch manage to operations within the federal government itself.
Executive order, also known as Proclamation, means a rule or regulation issued by the president that has the effect and formal status of otherwise direct the affairs of the executive branch. One of the most important examples is Executive Order No. 8248, September 8, 1939, establishing the divisions of the Executive Office of the President. It soon defined their duties, role and purposes of the Executive Office. The order was significant because it not only created a new staff member in the White House, but it also extended presidential control over the executive branch. The order no. 284 was led by the Reorganization Act of 1939, which gave the president the power to hire an additional confidential staff and reorganize the executive branch within certain limits for two years. Thus, the Act led to pass the Executive Order No. 8284. It has been called “one of the most striking executive executive orders in American history'[4]. For the first time in American History, there is a separation between institutional and personal staff of the President, institutional staff were relegated in the Executive Office of the President, while personal staff were employed in the White House Office.
To conclude, the executive order does apply to the president to have as the legislative role and it does sometime give the president much more power than the congress. Many critics argue that these unilateral decrees undermine our trusted system of checks and balances, giving undue authority to the executive branch [5]. As the result, the executive order grees to give the president the “legislative power. ” For example, president George W. Bush used the executive order to extend his power over Congress.
He issued many controversial orders about the gathering the information on against the terror, he secretly gave the permit for the National Secretly Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on phone calls made by the people who living in the United States, which have been called unconstitutional under the executive power. In recently years, President Barack Obama also has wielded the executive order as an increasingly powerful pushing through programs and regulations. He declared that the administration should be used more executive order to govern to face congressional obstructionism. We can’t wait”, a slogan and campaign that the President had rolled out the policies in the White House-on creating Jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more. he also pointed that he was gonna continue to do everything in his power to act without the congress [6]. The president has received sharp criticism for flexing his executive muscle, but even his critics acknowledge that Obama is far from the first president to ield executive orders as a political weapon.
In recently life, the general example of check and balances system is the president has the right to veto the bill that already passed by Congress. On the news, President Obama said he promises veto the House of Representatives Bill to gut his healthy care law. The veto threat was expected but the Congress still intended to override the law. It would not stop the House from stopping the health care law that is part of a temporary funding bill in the House to prevent a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1. House Speaker John Boehner, R-
Ohio, said both the House and the Senate will pass the bill to keep government running; meanwhile, with the two-third of the Senate, the bill would still became a law. There are a ‘check and balance” is going on between the House, the Senate and the President. The president has to sign the bill otherwise he will veto a bill. However, the congress can override the bill by passing the bill in the Senate with two-third vote to override the president’s veto to against government shutdown. [7] The media is not in the constitution but it is still a tool on check and balance system between people and three branches.
President Barack Obama Just recently demonstrates the problem of the big government in the news [8]. The federal government plays a central role that consistently out of the power that Founding Father has said. They can control on education, salary rule, welfare, and commerce and so on. In 1900, the three level of government- national, state and local- Just took about 10 percents of people money but not it takes nearly 50 percents. According to the article, it remarks on how much power we given to the federal government that would violate personal liberty and how the government should work to guarantee eople interest.
As we know, the media is an effective tool to check the power between three branches- legislative, executive and Judicial. The media can show the watchers on how the government work, news about presidents, the senate and overall the politic of the world. However, president complains about the Fox news had entirely attacked his administration because they Just showed the news exact based on their viewpoint. After all, the president remarked that we need limited government. By reducing the size of government, we limit the amount of damage “the other side” can do when in charge.
In my opinion, the check and balance system plays a significant role on how the government work between each branch. The system allow that three branches has their own power; also, it guarantees that each branch not has too much power over the other branch and they can “check” each others to balance the system of three branch- legislative branch, executive branch and Judicial branch. The check and balance does make the United States a visual democracy because it does not give one branch the “tyranny’ power, it also allow people and the media to check on how the government work.