Constitutional Safeguards: How the Founders Designed America's Power Structure

Power division is at the heart of America's constitutional system, yet few truly understand its ingenious architecture. Dr. Sean Beienberg breaks down this complex framework, revealing how the founders created a government designed not for gridlock but for balance—preventing tyranny while enabling effective governance.

Drawing from James Madison's Federalist 51, Dr. Beienberg illuminates the "double security" built into our constitutional structure. The Constitution first divides authority vertically between federal and state governments, allocating "police powers" (responsibility for health, welfare, safety, and morals) primarily to states while reserving foreign policy and interstate commerce for federal jurisdiction. Within each level, power is further divided horizontally across legislative, executive, and judicial branches, each with distinct responsibilities and authorities.

This separation creates what scholars call horizontal and vertical power distribution—a safeguard against concentration of authority in any single institution. Additional protections include bicameral legislatures, constitutional civil liberties, and the checks each branch exercises over others. The result is a system of remarkable resilience where, as Madison wrote, "the governments will control each other at the same time. Each will be controlled by itself."

Understanding this constitutional architecture reveals why American governance often appears messy yet remains remarkably stable. When functioning correctly, it provides clear accountability while ensuring the damage remains limited even if one component becomes corrupted. For anyone seeking to comprehend America's political foundation, this exploration of constitutional power division provides essential context for navigating today's complex political landscape.

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Chapters

• 1:32 Welcome to Civics in a Year
• 1:57 Constitutional Division of Power Explained
• 2:44 Madison's Federalist 51 Insights
• 4:32 Horizontal and Vertical Power Division
• 7:02 Advantages of the Constitutional System

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:46

Welcome to Civics in a Year. Today we are going to be talking about how power is divided in the US government under the Constitution. With us we have Dr Sean Byenberg. Dr Byenberg, can you really get into the and I don't want to say it's elementary, but setting kind of a stage for us of how is power divided in the US government under our Constitution, right?

Speaker 2: 1:11

So the US Constitution is, I think, fundamentally understood in many ways as a division of power in terms of institutions. So it wants. Its primary purpose is not to make government impossible, it is to make a functioning government. So we don't want to overstate that and say it's just designed to make it impossible to govern, but it is designed to make it so that an institution cannot easily overpower and abuse its constitutional mandates and therefore interfere with what that institution isn't supposed to be doing. So I know that we've had several sections on Federalist 51 with Alan Gibson, but it's worth just briefly restating one of the lines from Federalist 51, I think, where they're explaining James Madison is the author of that.

Speaker 2: 1:58

One is explaining that the Constitution creates multiple sets of divisions of power. As he says, the usurpations under this system will be guarded by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America again, compound republic meaning one in which the states are sort of retaining many powers, most powers, but also interacting with and handing power over to a central government in limited spheres. So it's this combination, but it's not a single smush of everything into one government. In the compound republic of America the power surrendered by the people is divided first into two distinct governments, by which he means the federal level and the state level. The power is split between them. And then he says and then the portion allotted to each is subdivided among distinct and separate departments. And so what he means is, looking at both the state and the federal levels, there is then a sort of division of power between the legislative, executive and judicial powers. So he then says this is a double security arises to the rights of the people. The governments will control each other at the same time. Each will be controlled by itself. So what he means by that is that the states and the feds in some ways will each be working to ensure that each stays within the proper limits.

Speaker 2: 3:17

The Constitution primarily sets limits on federal power, but there are places where it sets limits on state power as well, and these limits have expanded over years, particularly after the Reconstruction Amendments. But what he says is, effectively, the states and the feds will work to keep each other in line, and the different branches of each of the states and the feds will keep each other in line at that level. So scholars refer to this as both a horizontal and a vertical division of power. Vertical, meaning above and below, that the states and the feds have different allocations so that the states are primarily given what's called the police powers I make this joke often, but it's not nightstick and a badge, but it's primary responsibility for health, welfare, safety and morals. That's left with the states and the federal government is given basically foreign policy and interstate commerce powers and a few others.

Speaker 2: 4:11

But basically that's the rough division. Each of them has sort of different jurisdiction, different portfolio, and then within the states and the federal government the division of power is that each branch is given effectively a distinct jurisdiction as well that the authority to make law, to design policy, to set the sort of trajectory of what the country is supposed to be or at the state level what the state is supposed to be, that is given to a legislature. It's not in Federalist 51,. But we also note that there's a division within most legislatures, that almost all legislatures in the United States are bicameral. There are two houses that have to concur. So even if you win the elections to secure one of the houses of the legislature, you still have to basically win the other. So that creates an additional division of power.

Speaker 2: 5:02

But lawmaking authority is supposed to lie with the legislative power in the legislative branch, executive power, which is to enforce the law, to take care that the law be faithfully executed, is how that is rendered in Article 2 for the president, and similar language exists for most state constitutions and governors. The authority to execute the law, to implement the law, to basically administer the details that is housed in the executive branch either the governor or the president and then the authority to adjudicate disputes, particularly within the Constitution but between citizens as well, is given to a judiciary branch. And so, going back to Montesquieu, montesquieu basically says this is how you build the best forms of government is making sure this division of power operates. And on top of this there's checks and balances, and we'll continue to talk more about that. But effectively, the sort of low-level threshold division of power is two sets of divisions one above and below states versus feds, in terms of who is supposed to work with what types of issues, and then, within whatever that level is a sort of horizontal division that's tripartite.

Speaker 2: 6:16

Certainly they're all tripartite at this point, the founding a couple of the states have weak executives, but the idea, as Madison says, is each of the branches has its own brief, each of them has their own jurisdiction, there's enough of a toehold that we talked about in Federalist 48 that they can block each other from doing the worst, but that the combination of that division of power and the checks and balances on top of as well civil liberties as a backstop in state and federal constitutions, it's worth noting in some ways.

Speaker 2: 6:46

There's a third one that Madison doesn't allude to, which is that state constitutions offer an additional check, so on the state governments, where most government governments going to happen anyway. So this system is very complicated in some ways, yes, but it has several advantages where it makes clear accountability of who's supposed to be doing what, at least if the system is being followed, and it makes it so that power is decentralized and not concentrated, so that even if any one particular branch or part of the government gets corrupted or captured by tyrannical or just even like ill, imprudent individuals, the damage is somewhat limited.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Thank you for that Again. We're just trying to build a foundation here and we've talked about some of this in the Federalist Papers, and we are going to continue to have these conversations about separation of powers, federalism and checks and balances in further episodes. Dr Beidenberg, thank you.