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Others wanted to unite all the inhabitants of the former colonies into one and the same people,
The practical consequences of these two theories were very different.
if it was a question of organizing a league
it was for the majority of the states to make the law, and not the majority of the ...
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In contrast, from the moment that the inhabitants of the United States were considered to form one and the same people,
the majority of citizens of the Union alone make the law.
The principle of the independence of the states triumphed in the formation of the Senate; the dogma of national sovereignty, in the composition of the House of Representatives.
Thus it can happen that a minority of the nation, dominating the Senate, entirely paralyzes the will of the majority represented by the other house, which is contrary to the spirit of constitutional governments.
this part of the Constitution has, up to the present, not produced the evils that one could have feared.
ANOTHER DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Senate differs from the other house not only by the principle of representation itself, but also by the mode of election, by the duration of the mandate, and by the diversity of prerogatives.
The House of Representatives is named by the people; the Senate, by the legislators of each state.
The one is the product of direct election, the other, of election in two stages. The mandate of the representatives lasts only t...
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The House of Representatives has only legislative functions; it participates in judicial power only in accusing public officials; the Senate concurs in the formation of laws; it judges political offenses that are referred to it by the House of Representat...
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ON THE EXECUTIVE POWER
they wanted to create an executive power that depended on the majority and that was nonetheless strong enough by itself to act freely in its sphere.
The president is an elective magistrate.
In exercising that power, moreover, he is not completely independent: the Senate oversees his relations with foreign powers as well as the distribution of posts,
They made the president the sole, unique representative of the executive power of the Union.
The salary of the president is fixed,
addition, the president is armed with a suspensive veto
HOW THE POSITION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES DIFFERS FROM THAT OF A CONSTITUTIONAL KING IN FRANCE
In the United States the executive power is limited and exceptional, like the very sovereignty in whose name it acts; in France it extends to everything, just like the sovereignty.
That is a first cause of inferiority,
The second
one can, properly speaking, define sovereignty as the r...
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The king in France really constitutes a part of the sovereign, since laws do not exist if he refuses to sanction them; he is, in...
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The president is equally the executor of the law, but he does not real...
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He therefore makes up no part of the sovereign; he i...
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The president is placed beside the legislature as an inferior and dependent power.
the power of the president of the United States is exercised only in the sphere of a restricted sovereignty, whereas that of the king in France acts within the circle of a complete sovereignty.
ACCIDENTAL CAUSES THAT CAN INCREASE THE INFLUENCE OF THE EXECUTIVE POWER
The president of the United States possesses almost royal prerogatives, which he has no occasion to make use of, and the rights which, up to now, he can use are very circumscribed: the laws permit him to be strong, circumstances keep him weak.
WHY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE A MAJORITY IN THE HOUSES IN ORDER TO DIRECT AFFAIRS
A king in Europe needs to obtain the support of the legislative body to fulfill the task that the constitution imposes on him, because that task is immense.
care for its execution has so completely devolved to him that if the law were against him, he could paralyze its force.
In America, the president cannot prevent the forming of laws; he cannot escape the obligation to execute them.
It is therefore his weakness, and not his force, that permits him to live in opposition to the legislative power.
ON THE ELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT
What one reproaches, not without reason, in the elective system applied to the head of state is that it offers such a great lure to particular ambitions, and inflames them so much in the pursuit of power, that often, legal means no longer sufficing for them, they appeal to force when right happens to fail them.
The dangers of the elective system therefore grow in direct proportion to the influence exerted by the executive power on affairs of state.
there is therefore always an intervening question to decide, which is knowing whether the geographic position, the laws, the habits, the mores, and the opinions of the people among whom one wishes to introduce it permit one to establish a weak and dependent executive power; for to wish all at once that the representative of the state remain armed with a vast power and be elected is to express, according to me, two contradictory wills.
only a sole means of making hereditary royalty pass to the status of an elective power: one must first narrow its sphere of action, gradually diminish its prerogatives, and habituate the people little by little to living without its aid.
No one has yet been encountered who cares to risk his honor and life to become president of the United States, because the president has only a temporary, limited, and dependent power.
Hereditary monarchies have a great advantage: as the particular interest of a family is continually bound in a strict manner to the interest of the state, not a single moment ever passes in which the latter is left abandoned to itself.
In elective states, on the contrary, at the approach of the election and long before it arrives, the wheels of government in a way no longer function except of themselves.
In the United States the action of the executive power can be slowed with impunity because that action is weak and circumscribed.
Yet, the lack of fixity is an evil so inherent in the elective system that it is still keenly felt in the president’s sphere of action, however circumscribed it may be.
constitutional monarchies, ministers succeed each other rapidly; but the principal representative of the executive power never changes, which confines the spirit of innovation within certain limits. Their administrative systems therefore vary in details rather than in principles;
As for the individual miseries
