Good Essay About Separation Of Power

Introduction

Separation of powers spells out the roles of the three arms of the government, that is, the executive, judiciary and the legislature. For example, the judiciary determines the laws that the congress is to follow, the executive appoints judges and the legislature is mandated with writing and enacting laws. The president does not have the express power per say to decide on whether a Supreme Court decision or a legislative act of the congress is unconstitutional. In principle, the separation of authority limits the express authority that the president may have in making decision; the constitution provides that legislative powers are a conferment of the Congress. In this regard, the president can only find an act of the legislature unconstitutional and hence seek an interpretation from the Supreme Court (Rodgers, 2011). Agreeably, the letter and spirit of the constitutional are best regarded when the executive power does not seem to undermine the legislative ability of the Congress and the unilateral role of the Supreme Court.
The election of Andrew Jackson is debatably the origin of the separation of the power struggle. Immediately after the election and President Jefferson realizing that he had lost the presidency he sorts judicial mischief (Welch, 2012). Illustratively, President Jefferson appointed justices in total disregard of the incoming regime; this move was interpreted as an attempt at safeguarding the ideologies that the Jefferson presidency had recognized. However, on being confirmed President Andrew Jackson embarked on a battle judicially to decommission the appointed justices. To achieve this, Andrew sorts the application of the Supreme Court through the then chief justice John Marshall. Seemingly rocked in a dilemma, Marshall had to strike a balance between judicial conformity and the supreme courts autonomy (Nelson, 2013). Consequently, Marshall resulted in neither piling pressure on the court system or undermining the presidency, in his ruling, marshal blamed the Congress for an Act that was unconstitutional. The ruling is a clear example of the conflict that exists in governance.
There has been a conflict between the legislature and the executive over separation of power. The central conflict stems from the election procedure of the officials and the powers that they hold. Before the elections that saw Bill Clinton elected as the president, the United States politics were mainly dominated by the gridlock. In 1992, there was power-sharing conflict between the two branches of government that were separately elected (Brule and Hwang, 2010). Each of the branches was controlled by a different party. The conflict between members of the executive and Congress declined since they had a common goal to deal with domestic and international issues.

References

Brule, D. J., & Hwang, W. (2010). Diverting the Legislature: Executive–Legislative Relations, the Economy, and US Uses of Force1. International Studies Quarterly, 54(2), 361-379.
Rodgers, P. (2011). United States Constitutional Law: An Introduction. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., Publishers.
Nelson, G. (2013). Pathways to the US Supreme Court: From the arena to the monastery.
Welch, S. (2012). Understanding American Government. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.Top of Form
Nelson, G. (2013). Pathways to the US Supreme Court: From the arena to the monastery.