United States Government - Dividing the Government into 3 Separate Branches

United States Government

The forming of a new country was not easy. People wanted to protect their rights and the rights of their states, and others who knew the importance of forming a federal government to oversee the individual states. Every view had valid concerns and great ideas. The founding fathers worked together to solve the concerns of individuals and compromised their own ideas to form a new government and the Constitution.

Dividing the Government into 3 Separate Branches

The American government was only recently freed from the oppressive rule of England and King George III when the forefathers came together with the intent of a new government. The government envisioned was one that could not only serve the people, but be restricted from becoming anything that would resemble the tyranny which was still fresh on the forefathers mind. One of the results of this idea was the separation of the three branches of the government, or the separation of powers. Essentially what this did was split up the responsibilities between the legislative, judicial, and presidential (executive) branches. The establishment of these branches occurs in the first three articles in the American Constitution. Even though the responsibilities were separated amongst three branches, there was an amount of interdependency that prevented any one branch from becoming too powerful. These three branches were created to be independent from each other while still managing to refrain from infringing upon one another's rights. This idea is one of the basic doctrines in the U.S. Constitution. For example: the president is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, but only Congress can raise and support an army. Congress can enact laws but that can be overridden, or vetoed, by the President unless a two-thirds majority votes in both houses occurs. This balance of power between the three branches of government (judicial, legislative, and executive) was originally set in place by our forefathers, the creators of the Constitution, to prevent the reoccurrence of a tyrannical government infringing upon the rights of the citizens of the United States.

Benefits of Dividing the Government

The Unites States founding fathers divided the American government into three branches which are: the legislative, judicial, and presidential braches because the fathers of America thought that the primary function of government is to punish criminals and also because of the limited and self-government traditions during the colonial period. Our fathers did not want our country to be a government like England. They believed that the people did not want to have a dictatorship or monarchy when they broke away from Britain. Our America founding fathers believe that it will be better for our country to create a standard government that would promote a majority rule and also would have restrictions on the amount of power of the majority. Under the Articles of Confederation, protecting the freedom and rights of the people and building a strong centralized government was very necessary. Each branch holds both power and restrictions and while working together it creates a checks and balance system. The first three Articles of the Constitution list the responsibilities of each branch. The Articles of Confederation was not working and the forefathers wanted a government that united all states.

People believe that the structure of the United States government is very complicated. It would be a lot easy to make changes to the government policies if the government was simpler. A challenging government form makes it a lot easier to hide dishonesty. But the challenging of the government is an important part of the checks and balances.

Obstacles the Division of Powers in the Government Presents

The separation of powers, being inherently designed to keep balance between the branches of government can present obstacles that ultimately affect the enactment of legislation. In the simplest terms, each division of power has specific role