Three Branches, No Referee

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Montesquieu did not trust virtue to keep power in check, so he built a system that did not need to. In The Spirit of the Laws, he argued that liberty survives only where legislative, executive and judicial power are held by three separate bodies, each strong enough to resist the other two but none strong enough to govern alone. There is no referee standing above the three branches in this design; the branches referee each other. The framers who wrote the United States Constitution in 1787, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton chief among them, built the American government directly on that premise. Congress writes the laws, declares war, and can override a presidential veto; the President can veto Congress's bills, appoints the officials who run the executive branch, and commands the armed forces; and the courts interpret what the other two have done, ready to say when either has gone beyond its own authority. No single branch answers only to itself, which was exactly Montesquieu's point: a government that checks itself does not need to be trusted to be safe.