Since we’re discussing constitutional stuff tonight, let’s talk about co-equal branches of government

February 15th, 2009 at 08:27pm Pat Cunningham

Hardly a day goes by anymore that I don’t hear somebody solemnly hold forth on the so-called sacred principle that the three branches of the federal government are “co-equal.”

Democrats frequently raised the issue when they controlled Congress during the last few years of George W. Bush’s Republican presidency.

Well, I’m here to tell you, as I’ve done at least once before on this blog, that those Democrats were wrong.

Yes, the notion that the Constitution created three co-equal branches of government is an article of faith among most Americans.  It’s popularly viewed as the provision that gives us our system of checks and balances. But it’s not true.

Most of the politicians who play the co-equal card (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both played it during their campaigns last year) intend to argue against any presumption that the presidency is pre-eminent.

But the fact is that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who wanted co-equal branches and regretted that they weren’t getting them.

Historian Garry Wills presents a convincing case against the “co-equal” theory — and against various other popular myths about the Constitution — in his wonderful book “A Necessary Evil,” which was published in 1999.

THIS GUY, too, raises a good argument against the theory of co-equal branches.

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