The importance of the balance of power in the American constitution

I open my e-book on the booming American economy with an overview of the American constitution. This seems appropriate as it is a significant factor in the way America had always been managed in Washington as well as out in the different states, and it would become an essential factor in the way first Hoover and then Roosevelt responded to the crisis of the Great Depression, and indeed the way in which Republicans responded to the New Deal.

In liberal democracies, the balance of power is seen as critically important. It is a balance between the executive, i.e. the government, the legislature, and in America this means Congress, i.e. the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the judiciary which again, in America, includes the Supreme Court. Whilst in a federal system, like America’s, balance is also ensured in the relationship between the President, the head of the executive, and the states. I write about the balance of power in the e-book but I want to expand on it here to underline its significance.

American presidents can’t just do as they please, they have to get their laws through the legislature and because it is voted for differently: the President every four years, senators for six years but only one-third of them are elected every two years, and congressmen are elected every two years. This means that the balance between the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, is always changing across the three branches of federal government, whilst the individual states will add to the mix. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to be president!

Now we need to add the Supreme Court into the mix. It consists of nine judges who are appointed for life by the sitting president whenever a vacancy occurs (though they also need the Senate’s approval). The purpose of the Supreme Court is to ensure that new laws are constitutional as well as to provide the definitive interpretation of laws, and to offer adjudication if it is felt that the constitution has been broken.

So, you can see that when a national crisis like the Great Depression hits, Democrats and Republicans will respond to that crisis in different ways and it depends who is President but it also depends on the political make-up of the House of Representatives and the Senate as to the room for manoeuvre that the president will have. And if he steps on the toes of a particular state (and they mirror the federal government in that they have an executive, a governor, as well as an Upper House and a Lower House constituting their legislature, and their own Supreme Court) well, anything could happen, again depending on the political make-up of those states. And then there’s the Supreme Court in Washington. Again, you wonder why anyone would want to be president!

Now you are not studying the American constitution, at least not on this IGCSE History course, but I think all this is interesting to know, and if you take nothing else away you will at least be aware that in responding to the economic crisis facing America in the 1930s, their presidents had to tread both determinedly and very, very carefully.