Balancing the Powers, Balancing the Need for Term Paper

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Balancing the Powers, Balancing the Need for Gridlock

The American system of government is the most fairly designed system of governance in the world today, designed to balance the three branches that make up the triangular structure of its government. The American system of government is designed not to work and remains in a state of hopeless and continual structural gridlock in a kind of 'rock, paper, scissors' style of governance that is amicable to a child's game but not to modern governance. How can both of these statements be simultaneously true?

The answer lies in the notion of the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers in the designed system of governance by the Founding Fathers of the American nation. The Father's system was designed to create, through division, a balance of powers between the branches of government most and least responsive to the popular will. "The system of checks and balances is an important part of the Constitution. With checks and balances, each of the three branches of government can limit the powers of the others. This way, no one branch becomes too powerful. Each branch 'checks' the power of the other branches to make sure that the power is balanced between them." ("Checks and Balances." Fact Monster, 2003)

The legislative branch is composed of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Senate, until the 20th century, was appointed by the state legislature and remains the more reflective and limited body of governance in terms of its responsiveness, in contrast to the House, which has always been composed of directly elected representatives from designated, gerrymandered electoral districts.

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The Senate was supposed to be the more deliberative body of the two legislative bodies, because it was smaller and less responsive to electoral whims, as senators were elected every six years, rather than every two years like members of the House of Representatives. Thus a structural balance between reasoned judgment of professional politicians and the populace was instituted early on in American ideology of balancing powers and checking the popular whims.

However, the notion of professional politicians would have been largely anathema to the Founding Fathers, who hoped that individuals would serve for a time in governance, then return to their conventional occupations, preferably householders and farmers, as land ownership was a requirement in voting rights until the populist president Andrew Jackson's ascendancy to power. The powers of the legislative assemblies were further checked and limited by the governance of the executive branch's authority, the branch composed of the president and his various secretaries. The Founding Fathers feared a reigning king in the form of the chief executive, and limited the executive's power not merely through the existence of the legislative branch, but by giving the legislature the ability to override the president's will and articulated desires, and also by according all unspecified powers to the states.

The judicial branch, the third branch of government is perhaps the most vaguely defined of all the branches. Essentially, the Marshall Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, claimed a right….....

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