Reclaiming our constitutional democracy and keeping it vital for the future

The Founding Fathers established separate executive, judicial, and legislative branches in order to create a system of checks and balances that would protect Americans from tyranny. That system is under threat today. The executive branch has increasingly asserted its right to act in secrecy and to ignore laws passed by Congress. The courts have not yet stepped up to the challenges posed by these unprecedented claims of presidential power, and the majority in Congress has chosen uncritical support for the president instead of meeting their constitutional duty to oversee and check executive power. The judicial branch has increasingly substituted its judgment for that of Congress on issues of national importance. The result is a federal system that is dangerously unbalanced. We must insist on a return to the Framers’ vision of three branches that respect and check one another.