Checks and Balances

Checks and Balances

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Although scholars dispute the precise origin of the phrase checks and balances, the basic idea of limiting political power through various institutional means is both ancient and modern. In the ancient worlds of the Greek city-state and the Roman Republic, a mixed constitution of the one, the few, and the many provided checks on governmental power, whether in the form of a monarchy (the rule of one), an aristocracy (the rule of the few), or a democracy (the rule of the many). This scheme of balancing and checking power, particularly as expressed in the works of Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, was a powerful influence in early modern Europe during the period of the Renaissance as expressed in the works of Niccolo Machiavelli, James Harrington, and Algernon Sydney. This ancient and Renaissance concept of a mixed constitution may also be found in the eighteenth-century works of Charles de Montesquieu, Francis Hutcheson, and William Blackstone. All of these works influenced the founders of the United States, notably John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. The classic literary study of the political dynamics in this scheme is William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.

The modern concept of checks and balances derives primarily from a mechanical view of the universe made popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, among others. For Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 9, a concept of “legislative balances and checks” was among the modern improvements in the science of politics. According to the modern view—as reflected in the United States Constitution—the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government must check and balance each other in order to prevent any one branch of government from dominating the others. In the American scheme, for example, presidents may veto acts of Congress, but Congress has the power to override presidential vetoes by a two-thirds majority vote of both houses. Similarly, as established in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), federal judges may rule acts of Congress unconstitutional as occurred in the cases of City of Boerne v. Flores (1997) and Clinton v. City of New York (1998).

Checks and balances also refers often to issues of federalism, or the relationship between the national and state (or regional) governments. In the United States, for example, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution grants “reserved” powers to the states. This has meant, according to the courts, the power of state governments in the United States to regulate health, safety, and morals. But the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, checks this power by asserting that no state may deny any person “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” nor may a state deny “equal protection of the laws.” In a number of recent cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted these constitutional provisions so as to limit state prerogatives in such areas as capital punishment, affirmative action, privacy rights, and voting rights. For some, checks and balances also refers to modifications in American political practice outside of formal constitutional change or judicial interpretation. Among these modifications are the rise of national political parties, the expansion of presidential power, the creation by Congress of independent regulatory agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency), and changing technologies, particularly as these technologies make possible the more rapid exchange of information, such as through widespread access to the World Wide Web.

SEE ALSO Aristocracy; Constitution, U.S.; Democracy; Machiavelli, Niccolò; Monarchy; Separation of Powers

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Montesquieu, Charles de. 1989. Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws. Trans. and ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. (Orig. pub. 1748).

Pocock, J. G. A. 1975. Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Timothy Hoye