Division of Powers

                The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the division of powers built into the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, the Founders divided the national powers into three branches – the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. In dividing the national powers into three branches, the Founders meant for the three branches to keep each other under control. With Congress giving some of their powers to the Executive branch and the Supreme Court attempting to legislate laws, the controls on the three branches are still there but slowly failing.

                Barack Obama uses his pen and his telephone to make policies. If he cannot persuade Congress to pass a bill that he wants, he simply signs an Executive Order. He does not have a judicial record because the Supreme Court is still exerting controls on his actions on immigration, environmental policy, and presidential appointees.

                Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal recently wrote about seven times when the judicial branch stopped power grabs from the Executive branch. “Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued a July 2014 report that found 20 instances in which a unanimous high court ruled against the administration. Not all of these cases were executive actions, but legal interpretations by an agency.

                “The Obama administration has fared worse before the Supreme Court than any other modern president’s administration, with a 45 percent win rate, according to an analysis by Ilya Shapiro, a fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Obama’s last five predecessors had a win rate of between 60-75 percent before the high court, according to Shapiro.”

                Even though every President uses more executive power than the last, Obama has exceeded all of them with his unconstitutional grabs for power. This has happened because Congress and the courts have yielded some of their controls.

                The high rate of unanimous rebukes by the Supreme Court happened because of the Obama administration’s “pattern of ignoring the rule of law and usurping the role of Congress.”  The Judicial branch stopped power grabs in the following seven actions: (1) Executive Amnesty, (2) School Gender Identity Restrooms Mandate, (3) Appointing without Confirmation, (4) Delayed Carbon Regulations, (5) Searching Cellphones,

(6) Obamacare Judicial Setback, and (7) Regulating Water. You can read details of these seven actions in Lucas’ article titled “7 Big Judicial Setbacks to Obama’s Executive Overreach.”

                In order for our national government to operate correctly, each of the three branches of our government – the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial – must operate within the bounds given in the Constitution. Anything less gives power to the wrong branch of government.