Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Constitutional Law Debate: The Legislative Branch
The Legislative Branch of government is the most powerful for many reasons. Of course, there would be people who would argue against that and state that other branches are more powerful because of specific powers that those branches possess. Despite that argument, the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Government clearly has more power because of the types of decisions that have been entrusted to them. Discussed here will be some of those decisions, along with how they apply to the "real world" and how they are viewed by people who have to live with the decisions that the Legislative Branch makes.
The Legislative Branch is the one that levies taxes (Trethan, 2011). Taxes are important and they pay for many government programs. They also allow crews to keep up roads and bridges, along with other structures that are owned and operated by the government. Overall, taxes are what most people would consider a "necessary evil." People who have to pay a lot in taxes are not happy with them, and many corporations and wealthy individuals have found creative ways to avoid many of the taxes that they would otherwise have to pay. Occasionally, bills are introduced that would close some tax loopholes, but they usually do not pass.
Once the Legislative Branch makes the rules about taxes, it also decides how to spend the...
Any money that the government spends, no matter where it came from, is the responsibility of the Legislative Branch of the government (Trethan, 2011). Being able to both decide how to collect and decide how to spend the money of the country is an amazing amount of power. There are, of course, checks and balances within government that stops the Legislative Branch (or any other branch) from being able to do anything it wants (The Legislative, 2011). However, there is still a large amount of power given to the Legislative Branch that goes over and above what is given to other government branches.
Another ability that makes the Legislative Branch so powerful is the ability to write laws (Federal, 2011). Not every branch has the opportunity to create the laws that the people of the United States have to follow. Because that can be done by the Legislative Branch, it is capable of changing the very face of America. What is acceptable and not acceptable from a legal standpoint is decided there, so the people who occupy that branch of government must be trustworthy and careful individuals that really do care about life and liberty. They will have to follow the laws they create, just as everyone else will, but it is vital that they do not allow that to cloud their judgment when determining whether to pass a law. Instead, they must examine what…
References
Federal Legislative Branch (2011). USA.gov. Retrieved from http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Legislative.shtml
The Legislative Branch (2011). The White House. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/legislative-branch
Trethan, P. (2011). The Legislative Branch. Establishing the laws of the land. Retrieved from http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/legbranch.htm
United States - Legislative Branch (2011). HG.org Legal Directories. Retrieved from http://www.hg.org/legislative.html
Meanwhile Congress was reluctant to challenge Bush (members feared being termed "unpatriotic" since Bush argued that the safety of Americans depended on the secret surveillance done by NSA) immediately, but in the past few months Congress (the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees) has demanded - and in part received - access to internal documents on the wiretapping program. "That access could ultimately help persuade skeptical lawmakers in the House,
If a plea bargain is reached before the trial, often the trial will not continue. The suspect will be sentenced and then continue to incarceration. Plea-bargaining is a legal tool, which keep the courts from becoming too clogged (Champion 208). This ends the Pre-Trial phase of the criminal court system. Next in the process is the trial itself. Most people who enjoy courtroom dramas will recognize this phase of the
Justices can make public pronouncements on issues that are important to the federal judiciary - not specific cases that come before the court, but general political and social issues. For example, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, recently made a speech that warned about attacks against judicial independence. He was stating what the framers of the Constitution worried about hundreds of years ago when he said:
The Court rejected Medellin's argument that the President's 2005 Memorandum was binding on state courts. The Court accused the President of attempting to unilaterally converting a non-self-executing treaty into a self-executing one." The government had also claimed that the Memorandum was an exercise of the President's authority to resolve international claims under his executive authority. The Court recognized that this was a long-standing practice, but prior uses of executive authority
Executive Branch Authority to Conduct Foreign Affairs Executive Power is vested in the President of the United States by Article II of the Constitution. Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the American Constitution, called the 'Executive Vesting Clause' has been the constant focus of constitutional analysis, even at the time of its ratification. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton famously debated this clause in 1793, on the specific issue of residual
However, the system is much more representative. Thus, in the British Parliament there are representatives from the Scottish parliament as well as from the Northern Ireland Assembly. Even so, the proposals for the reform of the electoral law and program have tried to ease the access of the population to the voting system, to increase the public awareness in relation to the political representation. This would determine a better