Checks and No Balances

Extract

Fear of concentration of power in the hands of one group or one person has written into many constitutions in the past hundred and seventy years or more a variety of safeguarding provisions against uncontrolled and arbitrary exercise of authority. Revolutionary leaders in America, conscious of the abuses of power against which they had successfully taken up arms, attempted to protect all future generations by incorporating into new covenants and fundamental laws salutary checks against tyranny. While for the most part the authors of the American fundamental law had not been the idealistic, enthusiastic leaders of the Revolution, they were sufficiently imbued with revolutionary thinking and ideology to incorporate checks against concentrated power in the Constitution. It is true that they feared different tyrants: the common sense of Madison could see tyranny in the uncontrolled demos of urban centers; the penetrating intellect of a James Wilson could see it in the preponderant influence of an aristocracy; the unstable and emotional Patrick Henry could see it in any form of strong government. All the framers of our fundamental law were on the look-out for tyranny. Their minds ran naturally to checks against one group or another, or one governmental institution or another.