The genius of the Constitution’s chief author, James Madison, was to conceive of this constitutional balance as dynamic, not static. In Madison’s vision, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of American government would have their powers separated out, so that instead of cooperating they would be locked in permanent but dynamic competition. No group of cunning and unscrupulous men could seize control of one branch to dominate the others, as the Medici had in Florence (and as, many Americans felt, King George’s ministers had taken control of the Parliament in Britain), because
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