Man Up, Legislators

An important and timely post at the National Catholic Register blog. There Tom Hoopes recalls the old days, when we had three branches of government.

The United States was founded on a system of checks and balances that gave three branches of government — the executive, the legislative and the judicial — equal footing in the project of governing the nation according to the Constitution. All three branches swear to uphold the Constitution and all three are empowered to make decisions about what is and what isn’t constitutional.

The beauty of this system is that, when one branch begins to read strange and unintended meanings into the Constitution, another branch stops it.

The danger of the system is that, if the legislative and executive branches throw up their hands and say that it’s up to the judiciary to decide what is and isn’t constitutional, then a panel of unelected judges becomes the real highest power in the land.