What is the separation of powers in the United States? What are the characteristics?

Let me talk about the characteristics first, which are: mutual containment and mutual operation. Complement each other. And it is not easy to cause social contradictions, which is conducive to social stability.

What is the separation of powers in the United States? It turns out that at the beginning of the founding of the United States, in order to prevent this new autocracy (that is, autocracy in the field of three powers caused by separation of powers), the US Constitution did not confirm who was the highest organ of state power in the United States. In other words, the United States does not actually have the highest organ of state power. This is different from our country. China clearly stipulates that the National People's Congress is the highest authority. ) The three are in parallel. In other words, the United States has three highest organs of state power. They demand from each other and restrict each other's power.

American sages thought, "I hope to have a more effective government ... efficiency and order are important considerations, but not as important as freedom." They want to ensure domestic stability and prevent future rebellion, but they also want to prevent the emergence of an indigenous George III. " In other words, in the minds of the founders of the United States, freedom is more important than government efficiency. In order to protect freedom, they would rather sacrifice efficiency.

So the essence of separation of powers is to reduce efficiency. Because of the tension between efficiency and freedom and justice, there must be trade-offs.

The characteristic of decentralization system in western countries is that different institutions have legislative power, administrative power and judicial power respectively. In view of the historical lessons of colonial rule, the general trend is to attach importance to the prevention of administrative power. Decentralization in constitutions of various countries is a kind of decentralization that emphasizes "the supremacy of legislative power" and "the supremacy of parliament". At the same time, however, the constitutions of various countries do not establish clear restrictions on legislative power, which leads to the parliament arbitrarily encroaching on the power of the administrative and judicial departments, and even "declaring the court's ruling on property disputes invalid".

At the 1780 Constitutional Convention, "If legislative power, executive power and judicial power are exercised separately, which is a basic principle of a free government, then they should also be exercised independently, which is also an equally important basic principle (Madison)". The three powers should not only be separated, but also be independent of each other, which is the leading idea of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. This is also the separation of powers in the United States, which is different from other western countries such as the British-style parliamentary supremacy separation system, but adopts a parallel and independent separation system of legislative, executive and judicial departments. This is a more thorough decentralization.

This more thorough separation of the three powers shows that the sources of power are different and their positions are parallel. "Let the members of each department play as small a role as possible in the appointment of members of other departments". Congress is elected by the voters of each state or constituency; The president is elected by an electoral college composed of electors elected by voters; Judges at all levels of the federal court shall be appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate, and shall serve for life without dereliction of duty.

These three departments are politically independent from each other. The three departments have different sources of power, so there is no political responsibility between them. The president and his government are not responsible to Congress, and Congress has no right to ask the president to resign unless he is impeached. The president also has no right to dissolve Congress; Neither the President nor Congress has the right to dismiss, dismiss or retire federal court judges in advance.

Because of this mutual independence, members of the three organs are not allowed to hold part-time jobs with each other, the president, government officials and judges are not allowed to occupy or reserve seats in the National Assembly, members of parliament are not allowed to be appointed as civil servants, and government officials and members of parliament are not allowed to serve as judges at the same time. This is the so-called "incompatibility principle", and the three powers are divided into legislative power, administrative power and judicial power.

However, these three departments do not simply exercise their respective powers. These three institutions need the cooperation of other departments in performing their functions. A government in which power is shared by different institutions. The legislative power belongs to the National Assembly, but the bills of the National Assembly will take effect only after being signed by the President, and the effective laws will be implemented by the President; The executive power belongs to the president, but the president needs to be sworn in under the supervision of the chief court of the Supreme Court; The president leads the government, but the nomination of senior government officials by the president must be approved by the Senate, and the government budget also needs to be approved and appropriated by the National Assembly. The president is responsible for signing treaties with foreign countries, but the signed treaties need to be approved by the Senate before they can take effect. Judicial power belongs to the federal supreme court and the federal lower courts, but the decisions made by the courts need to be implemented by the government, and the operation of the courts also needs funds from Congress, which establishes the federal lower courts through legislation.

Moreover, all three organs have the means to restrict and defend each other. "To prevent some powers from being gradually concentrated in the same department, the most reliable way is to give the heads of various departments the necessary legal means and personal initiative to resist the infringement of other departments. ..... ambition must be countered by ambition. "

The president can veto congressional bills; Congress can refuse to pass the president's government budget, and the Senate can refuse the officials nominated by the president and the treaties signed. As a means to counter the infringement of other departments: the two houses of Congress can pass the bill passed by the President again by a two-thirds majority to overturn the veto (VETO) of the President; The Supreme Court can rule that laws passed by the National Assembly and signed by the President, as well as administrative orders and regulations of the government, are unconstitutional, but the National Assembly can decide and change the number of members of the Supreme Court through laws and annul the court's ruling by proposing constitutional amendments. In addition, Congress can impeach the President, other senior government officials and federal court judges: the House of Representatives has the impeachment power, and when the impeachment case occurs, the House of Representatives passes the impeachment by a majority vote; The Senate holds the judicial power of impeachment cases, and the impeached officials can be dismissed through conviction by a two-thirds majority; If the president is impeached, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will preside over the trial.

This shows that Americans not only share power, but also share it more thoroughly. Not only through federalism, but also through parallel decentralization, it is further subdivided at the central level.