Explain how legislative, executive, and judicial powers are distributed and shared.

As they drafted and refined the Constitution, the Framers sought to create a government that had sufficient authority to pursue national objectives but that was not powerful enough to trample on the rights of the people. It was not a simple task. Remember James Madison’s observation that, in forming a government of “men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself” (Federalist No. 51).

The national government is granted legislative, executive, and judicial authority by the Constitution. However, to oblige the government to “control itself,” these powers are “separated,” with a distinct branch of government being the primary holder of each power.

The Congress, comprised of the House of Representatives and the Senate, is granted legislative authority while executive authority is granted to the president and judicial power is granted to the Supreme Court. However, each branch is also given the ability to “check and balance” the actions of the other. For example, the president can veto legislation passed by the Congress, the Congress can investigate and even impeach the president, and the Courts can rule the actions of the president and Congress “unconstitutional.” By providing “auxiliary precautions,” or by providing ways that each branch can limit the others’ exercise of their powers, the Framers created a system in which powers are not absolutely separate. Indeed, the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are, to varying degrees, both separated and shared by the three branches of government.

The Framers believed it was critical to separate and check governmental authority in this manner, because the accumulation of power in one office or branch was dangerous. Far from allowing the concentration of power in one branch, the Constitution sets “ambition against ambition” to prevent any one branch of government from overstepping its bounds and infringing the rights of the people.

The Constitution of the United States does not grant to the president unlimited authority to run the national government. In fact, it gives only limited powers to the president and grants both the legislative and judicial branches powers that allow them to check and frustrate presidential power.

Many observers and political scientists have suggested that the presidency has grown so much in importance and power that the United States political system is presidentially-centered and dominated. However, “the President is not the presidency. The presidency is not the government. [And] ours is not a presidential system.”¹¹ Indeed, presidential authority is exercised in the context of a separated system, in which the powers of the national government are divided between three branches, each branch holding “checks” against the others. The table on the next page (Table 3–1) emphasizes the reality that powers are as much shared as they are separated.

^11.Charles O. Jones, The Presidency in a Separated System (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1994), 1.