Day 4: Checks and Balances

Checks & Balances: Recognizing that the vast majority of examples from history demonstrated a concentration of power in governments that led to their eventual overthrow, the authors of the Constitution established a horizontal system of checks and balances. 

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”-  James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others… Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” - James Madison, The Federalist Papers 

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln