Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
as often to attend and participate in its deliberations, though not
admitted to a legislative vote. From these facts, by which Montesquieu
was guided, it may clearly be inferred that, in saying “There can be no
liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the
same person, or body of magistrates,” or, “if the power of judging be
not separated from the legislative and executive powers,” he did not
mean that these departments ought to have no PARTIAL AGENCY in, or no
CONTROL over, the acts of each other. His meaning, as his own words
import, and still more conclusively as illustrated by the example in
his eye, can amount to no more than this, that where the WHOLE power of
one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the WHOLE
power of another department, the fundamental principles of a free
constitution are subverted. This would have been the case in the
constitution examined by him, if the king, who is the sole executive
magistrate, had possessed also the complete legislative power, or the
supreme administration of justice; or if the entire legislative body
had possessed the supreme judiciary, or the supreme executive
authority. This, however, is not among the vices of that constitution.
The magistrate in whom the whole executive power resides cannot of
himself make a law, though he can put a negative on every law; nor
administer justice in person, though he has the appointment of those
who do administer it. The judges can exercise no executive prerogative,
though they are shoots from the executive stock; nor any legislative
function, though they may be advised with by the legislative councils.
The entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, though by the
joint act of two of its branches the judges may be removed from their
offices, and though one of its branches is possessed of the judicial
power in the last resort. The entire legislature, again, can exercise
no executive prerogative, though one of its branches constitutes the
supreme executive magistracy, and another, on the impeachment of a
third, can try and condemn all the subordinate officers in the
executive department. The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his
maxim are a further demonstration of his meaning. “When the legislative
and executive powers are united in the same person or body,” says he,
“there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME
monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a
tyrannical manner. “ Again: “Were the power of judging joined with the
legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to
arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR.
Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all
the violence of AN OPPRESSOR. “ Some of these reasons are more fully
explained in other passages; but briefly stated as they are here, they
sufficiently establish the meaning which we have put on this celebrated
maxim of this celebrated author.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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