WEBVTT - How Do the Three Branches of the U.S. Government Work (Or Not Work) Together? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:08.720 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.760 If you're a person who is not a hardcore political junkie, 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.400 you may find yourself bewildered by how the three main 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:21.599 parts of the US government continually seem to be butting 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:25.560 heads instead of working together on solutions to the nation's problems. 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:29.760 But the government was structured in three parts for reasons. 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:35.080 The three branches are the executive branch, which includes the president, 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:39.160 their cabinet, and the agencies that they control. The legislative branch, 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.760 consisting of the two houses of Congress, which are the 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.840 House of Representatives and the Senate, and the judicial branch, 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:48.800 which includes the Supreme Court and all of the nation's 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:54.520 federal and state courts. In the abstract, here's how the 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:59.040 system sort of works. The President might press Congress to 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.320 pass legislation non sum issue that he made a campaign 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.120 promise to when act. After lots of arguing and finagling, 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:09.560 the legislators pass a bill, which sometimes turns out to 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.840 be very different from what the president asked for. If 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.000 he doesn't veto the bill, he may issue a signing 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.920 statement that spells out how the federal agencies that he 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.000 controls are going to enforce the law in a different 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:26.840 way than Congress intended. Then other executive branch employees draw 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.759 up regulations for how to enforce the law, and it 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:34.399 takes effect. Congressional committees may hold hearings to scrutinize what 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:38.959 the executive branch is doing, and to top it all off, 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.120 the US Supreme Court might step in and smack down 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.040 both the President and Congress by ruling that some part 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:49.520 of the law is unconstitutional, forcing them to essentially start over. 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.040 As wild as it may seem, that's how the nation's 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:58.040 founders actually intended the system to work, because they didn't 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:00.280 want any one part of the government to have too 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:04.200 much power. To that end, they filled the US Constitution 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.840 with checks and balances that each branch could impose upon 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:12.120 the others. The idea was that those three branches eventually 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:18.040 would hammer out compromises that everyone could live with. Of course, 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.320 the idea of having three branches of a government check 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:25.520 each other isn't an American invention. The founders, including James Madison, 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:27.840 the future president who was the lead author of the 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:32.399 US Constitution, were influenced by ideas all the way from antiquity, 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.880 like Aristotle's politics all the way through John Locke, the 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:42.000 late seventeenth century British philosopher, But the most prominent influence 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:46.040 may have been French philosopher Baron de Montenescu, author of 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.440 the seventeen forty eight treatise The Spirit of the Laws, 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.320 who described what should distinguish a self governing republic from 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:59.359 monarchies and despotic countries. The republican government, he believed, needed 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:04.600 to have and independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches in 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.079 order to prevent one another from abusing their various powers. 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.359 But the system devised by the founders, which is described 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.440 in Articles one, two, and three of the US Constitution, 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:22.320 wasn't quite as cotton dried as Montenescue's. Instead, they allowed 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:27.200 some overlap for the article. This episode is based on 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.000 How Stuffworks. Spoke via email back in twenty twenty with 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:33.320 Nicholas Mosvik, who at the time was a senior fellow 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.040 at the National Constitution Center, a museum and civil education 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:42.480 organization in Philadelphia. He said the easiest examples are in 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:47.480 the Senate and Article two. The Senate clearly holds executive 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.960 functions as they perform a role in advice and consent 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:55.800 for treaties, the appointment of judges and executive officers. The 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.480 president holds a veto power, which gives an a role 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.840 in legislation and the power to give advice to Congress, 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:03.560 but typically in the form of a state of the 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:10.280 Union and recommendations on legislation. To make things more complicated, 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.880 some of the president's powers aren't precisely spelled out in 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:18.960 the Constitution. For example, both executive orders and signing statements 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:23.440 are more modern inventions derived from implied language in the Constitution. 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.120 The concept of how the three branches work together or 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:32.320 against each other has indeed evolved over the centuries as 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:37.400 new circumstances have presented new situations. For example, during the 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:40.640 nineteen thirties, all three branches of government were involved in 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.760 creating and delineating the boundaries of a number of administrative 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:49.680 bodies surrounding industrialization, the First World War, the Great Depression, 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:54.240 and the New Deal. There's a concept called the non 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.120 delegation doctrine that states that a branch of the government 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.920 can't delegate its powers to another group. But during that 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.240 time in the nineteen thirties, the government created a number 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.720 of national agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration and 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.680 the Securities and Exchange Commission to help monitor and regulate 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:17.920 the developing realities of our society. Amosfik said the Supreme 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.920 Court was heavily involved in the nineteen thirties in determining 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.120 the boundaries of what we call delegation, the granting of 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.040 one branch's powers to an independent body or as part 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:31.320 of the executive branch. Some delegations were initially struck down 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.160 under the non delegation doctrine. Scholars debate whether or not 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.599 the non delegation doctrine flows from the understanding of the founders, 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.920 but the idea is simply that Congress cannot delegate its 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.640 core power from the vesting clause to make all laws 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:48.840 to another body, any more than it can grant non 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:53.839 Article three courts, Article three powers or jurisdiction. This, too, 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.719 is where recent questions about removal of directors of administrative 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.159 agencies by the President comes from. It too, is a 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.520 separation of powers question, but one that flows from modern 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:11.440 innovations that the founders could not entirely envision. However, the 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.599 checks and balances baked into the three branch system have 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:20.680 prevented abuses of power in modern situations. Houstuff Works also 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.960 spoke via email with Bruce Peabody, a professor of government 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:28.599 in politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He said one of 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:31.760 the classic examples is the push and pull associated with 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.719 the congressional investigation into the Nixon campaign's trespass and bugging 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:39.280 of the Watergate building and the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.960 Congress rightfully investigated the president pushed back, claiming that the 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.320 White House recordings which implicated the president were covered under 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.200 the legal protection of executive privilege, and the Supreme Court 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:55.240 helped navigate the dispute, ultimately ruling that the president did 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.279 have the unwritten constitutional power of the executive privilege, but 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:03.159 noting that it was not an unlimited power, and setting 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.359 out some of the rules for its use. In the 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:09.640 process of this dramatic example of checks and balances, each 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:14.080 branch arguably served its own political and institutional interests as 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:20.520 well as the nations, but the three branch system isn't 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:24.480 some machine that can just run on autopilot. In order 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.000 for the democracy to work, the people in the three 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.200 branches need to have personal qualities that go beyond the 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.200 architecture of the system. In recent years, we've seen the 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:37.320 system become less effective in working out conflicts and taking 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:42.440 effective action. The increasingly acrimonious stalemate over the nation's immigration 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:48.280 policy is a prime example. Peabody said, I would probably 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:53.560 attribute our logjam and chronic inaction most directly to hyperactive partisanship. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.440 But yes, this development is tied up with a decline 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.200 in our belief in Republican virtue, a somewhat old fashioned 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.680 idea that our leaders should be expected to act for 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.680 the public good a not just personal interest, and that 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:11.760 they should achieve honor while serving in government. Political science 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.440 scholars have identified basic norms that are necessary for enabling 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.720 our government to function. One of those key principles, Peabody explains, 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.040 is mutual toleration. The idea of accepting your political opponents 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.880 is legitimate even if you've eminently disagree with them. The 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.080 keyword here is mutual, as all parties must act in 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.600 good faith in order for the system to work. Another 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.640 important ingredient is forbearance, which basically means that you self 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:41.320 impose limits on how far you'll go in using your 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.240 powers of government to advance your interests and those of 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:49.880 the political party to which you belong. Even outside of 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:54.199 our current circumstances, America's three branch system is highly susceptible 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:58.040 to developing imbalances, in part because the founders chose to 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:02.480 create a strong chief executive in the president. That leader 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:06.000 has brought authority and can't easily be removed from power 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:10.359 before their four years are up. In the UK, by contrast, 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.600 political conflict can lead to Parliament calling an early election 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.120 that can lead to the Prime Minister being kicked out 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:20.800 of power. To exacerbate this problem, over the years, we've 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:25.320 seen a gradual expansion of presidential power. Peabody said that 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:29.000 the US government has become increasingly president centric for a 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.640 variety of reasons, from changes in our media environment and 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:36.720 political campaigns that focus on candidates rather than ideas, to 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.720 the growth of what sometimes called the administrative state, that is, 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:47.120 the vast and permanent bureaucracy of executive branch agencies. Peaboddy 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.480 said this, combined with both parties post FDR success in 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:54.360 placing their candidates in the White House and the close 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:58.679 competitiveness of many presidential races, have made both Democrats and 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:03.840 Republicans complicit an increasing executive power. Both the Trump and 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.520 Obama administrations illustrate that we look to our chief executive 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.880 to solve problems and wheeled authority when Congress isn't able 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:17.440 to cooperate, lead, or assert itself. Taking immigration as an example, 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:21.560 after years of infighting in Congress, a President Obama in 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.600 twenty fourteen decided to issue an executive order deferring the 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.640 deportation of so called dreamers, meaning children who entered the 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.360 US illegally with their parents and grew up here. The 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:37.600 program is called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival or DACA. 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:43.240 The constitutionality of Obama's executive order was challenged, but ultimately 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:45.840 upheld in a narrow five to four decision by the 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:50.079 US Supreme Court in June of twenty twenty. In the meanwhile, 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.680 Obama tried to expand DAKA, but then the Trump administration 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.960 canceled the expansion and tried to dismantle DACA altogether. Then 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:03.080 President Biden administered another executive order reinstating it. That order 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.040 has also been challenged and is now making its way 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:11.400 back up through the courts. But even so, the three 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.680 branch system has an amazing amount of resilience. The Constitution 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.760 still enables Congress and the courts to push back against 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:22.840 presidential power and vice versa. Congress has a lot of 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.920 what's called power of the purse, a meaning they can 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:31.080 direct or redirect policy through funding and when. In twenty 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.360 twenty four, the Supreme Court ruled the presidents have immunity 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.960 from crimes they commit during official actions. The Biden administration 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:42.240 called for a constitutional amendment preventing that immunity and suggested 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:48.000 term limits for Supreme Court justices. The system is certainly 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:52.840 strained in these our hyperpartisan times, but it seems to 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.440 still be plodding along. We hear it. Brainstuff encourage you 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:01.600 to do your part. Educate yourself on local issues and elections, 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.920 and vote in those between term times. Local and state 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.000 appointments can have a huge impact on our lives and 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:14.640 on policies going all the way up to national issues. 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:19.880 Today's episode is based on the article what are the 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.520 three branches of US Government and how do they work together? 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.160 On how Stuffworks dot Com? Written by Patrick J. Kaiger. 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.920 Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:31.800 dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.640 podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:37.680 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.