System Of Checks And Balances

The workings of the United States government are intricate and can be difficult to understand. There are many policies that together to help the flow of the government move easily. Some policies are changing and some are new. Then there are those that have been in effect since the early colonial times. The division of the government into three branches, the checks and balances policies and amending the constitution are examples of three of these policies. The three branches of the government are imperative to keeping the powers combined between the states. There is the Judicial Branch which consists of the Supreme Court and all other federal courts. The Supreme Court was established in colonial times and the justices (judges) are appointed
Without it the government would not work efficiently and for the people. The idea of the policy was to keep one branch of the government from becoming more powerful than the others. The concept was to protect the people from tyranny. “At the same time, the powers of one branch can be challenged by another branch. This is what the system of checks and balances is all about” (Mount). The President can Veto any law passed by Congress, however in turn the Senate can override that Veto with a vote of two-thirds of both houses. The Judicial Branch can check Congress by declaring a law unconstitutional. The balance can be seen in the fact that the justices are appointed by the President but approved by the Senate. Another example of this balance lies in the impeachment process. It begins in the House but the trial lies with the Senate. This is the way to keep the President from becoming too powerful. This system has worked for decades and the founding fathers were quite ingenious in their creation of the
Men and women have fought for the rights and the privileges that it ensures American citizens. However, the founding fathers were wise in seeing that with time things might need to change or be amended. The process of amending the constitution is so intricate that out of the over none thousand amendments proposed since its inception only twenty-seven have come to pass. Out of those twenty seven, ten of those amendments were nearly immediate and are known as “The Bill of Rights”. There are two ways to amend the Constitution. First, amendment can take place by a vote of two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate followed by a ratification of three-fourths of the various state legislatures or conventions in three-fourths of the states. That would mean that today 38 states would have to agree to the amendment. This is the most popular way to approach an amendment. Second, the Constitution might be amended by a Convention called for this purpose by two-thirds of the state legislatures, if the Convention's proposed amendments are later ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures (or conventions in three-fourths of the states). With such tight restrictions on the process of amending the Constitution it has helped maintain the reverence of the purpose of the great