Government Ms. Cheng
3/4/07 Cui Ying Wu
In the Constitution of the United States, there is a system called “checks and balance”, it helps to separate and balance the power of three branches including executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch in government. Even though the purpose of “checks and balances” is giving equal power to each branch to check others, this system does not work well because the Judaic branch has less power than other two.

During the Enlightenment, one of the famous philosophers named Monrosquieu brought up the idea which was the separation of power about government , it means that the government should divide into different groups, each group has some special power. He also though of the system of “checks and balances”, each group has the power to oversee other groups in order to balance the power and prevent one group has too much power. According to these ideas of Monrosquieu, the constitution of the United States sets up three branches which are executive, legislative and judicial branches, each branch has some special powers to check other two branches. “ checks and balances” is very important to dominate the country and make the decision of government fairly. However, comparing the executive branch and legislative branch, the juiced branch has less and narrower power.

The president of the United States charges the executive branch, the legislative branch is charged by the congress and the juices branch is charged by the Supreme Court. In order to set up laws of the United States, three branches have different duties, the legislative branch makes the laws, the judicial branch interprets laws and the executive branch enforces the laws. For making laws, it seems their powers are equal. However, the executive branch has more power than judicial branch. The president has power to grant pardons an paroles, it means that even the Supreme Court has already put some persons who are guilty into jail, the president can free those prisons in special situations. The president appoints the federal judges of the Supreme Court. Contrary, the Supreme Court only has power to decide if actions of the president are constitutional, explains which negotiated by the president.

The legislative branch also has more power than judicial branch. By checking the Supreme Court, the congress has power to propose amendments to overturn court decisions, in spite of the Supreme Court has announced results of some cases, the congress still has power to override them. The Supreme Court only has power to decide if a law which made by the congress is constitutional; its power is limited in law area. The congress also has power to establish lower courts; these lower courts charged most of cases in the country. If the officials in the Supreme Court are not responsible, the congress can impeach and remove them, it makes big influence on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not work in most events of the country.
From the explanations above, we can see obviously that the power of the judicial branch has more limitations than executive branch and legislative branch. Both of two branches check the judicial branch by many ways, but the judicial branch just can check if their actions or laws are constitutional. So the “checks and balances” system does not work well, the judicial branch has less power to check other two branches.