A report on Constitution, Democracy and Separation of powers
In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits the majority and protects the minority—usually through the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, e.g. freedom of speech or freedom of association.
- DemocracyJohn Calvin (1509–1564) favoured a system of government that divided political power between democracy and aristocracy (mixed government).
- Separation of powersConstitutions with a high degree of separation of powers are found worldwide.
- Separation of powersMost of the concepts and ideas embedded into modern constitutional theory, especially bicameralism, separation of powers, the written constitution, and judicial review, can be traced back to the experiments of that period.
- ConstitutionThe model proposed that constitutional governments should be stable, adaptable, accountable, open and should represent the people (i.e., support democracy).
- ConstitutionHowever, if any democracy is not structured to prohibit the government from excluding the people from the legislative process, or any branch of government from altering the separation of powers in its favour, then a branch of the system can accumulate too much power and destroy the democracy.
- Democracy2 related topics with Alpha
Government
0 linksSystem or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
System or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy.
Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny.
An independent, parallel distribution of powers between branches of government is the separation of powers.
Constitution of the United States
0 linksSupreme law of the United States of America.
Supreme law of the United States of America.
It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution.
Its first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress (Article I); the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers (Article II); and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts (Article III).
Edwards. Donna, Mary Anne Franks, David Law (Chair in Public Law at the University of Hong Kong), Lawrence Lessig, and Louis Michael Seidman, "Constitution in Crisis: Has America's founding document become the nation's undoing?", Harper's Magazine, vol. 339, no. 2033 (October 2019), pp. 25–32. "The Constitution is not producing a democracy that's responsive to the people. [p. 31.]... How do we break this deeply unrepresentative system that we have right now?" "[O]ur system—and especially our elected leaders—are averse to change. But there is still a revolutionary spirit within the American public that doesn't exist among elected leaders." [p. 32.]