The Baron of the Separation of Powers

A French political thinker, Baron Montesquieu had various notable notions on society and politics but most remarkable would be his ideas on the separation of powers. Comparing the institutions of Great Britain with the more despotic institutions of the Bourbon monarchy of his age in France, as a case in point, Montesquieu in his Spirit of the Laws (De L’esprit des Lois 1748) explored what he posited to be a functional peculiarity of the British Constitution: the Separation of Powers.

This analytical separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, and the necessary balancing of such is arguably the most notable contribution of the thinker Montesquieu to political thought and practice. Montesquieu is Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et le Montesquieu (January 18, 1689 in Bordeaux – February 10, 1755). This review of his life and key ideas is an important effort toward a better understanding of the development of democractic ideals and ideas.

In the following essay, we shall endeavor to highlight the main points in the life of the thinker and the key notions that he explored and which earned him such distinction in political thought. Highlights of the Life of The Baron and Thinker. Montesquieu, as a product of the period of Enlightenment, articulated many seminal concepts in political philosophy and thought but he is most noted for the aforementioned notion of the separation of powers (Pangle, 75). His life was a narrative of political concern and privileged study.

Before marrying one Jeanne de Latrigue, a Protestant, he was a student at the Catholic College of Juilly. This marriage is notable as it brought him a substantial dowry at the relatively young age of 26. On top of this, he reportedly inherited quite a fortune from an uncle, including the title Baron de Montesquieu. These, it appears, had afforded him the luxuries of a passion for social commentary and political thought (Shackleton, 16) By that time he was married and titled, England had been through its so-called Glorious Revolution (1688–89) and had declared itself a constitutional monarchy.

Furthermore, England had by then joined with Scotland in the Union of 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. Then, in 1715, the Sun King, Louis XIV, was succeeded by a weaker monarch, Louis XV. Such developments meant a lot for the Baron as they are well noted in his writings such as in his magnum opus The Spirit of the Laws. The Spirit of the Laws was originally released in 1748 and, though published anonymously, quickly became popular among the commentators of the time.

Notably, it got strong criticism from both supporters and opponents of the regime in France while the Roman Catholic Church banned it with the other writings of Montesquieu in 1751. However, in the rest of Europe, it received acclaim especially in Britain (Shackleton, 83). In the then formative Northern America, in the British colonies, Montesquieu was seen as an advocate of liberty and is argued to have been the most often cited authority on politics (Lutz, 191). Montesquieu was able to travel throughout Europe including Austria, Hungary, Italy and England before resettling in France and eventually dying in 1755 and being buried in Paris.

The Thoughts of Montesquieu. Echoed by the American calls for change at that time, Montesquieu’s work was a great influence on many of the American Founders, such as James Madison. Montesquieu’s proposition that “government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another” reminded Madison and others that a free and stable foundation for their new national government required a clearly defined and balanced separation of powers — a theory merely implicit in Aristotle (Thackrah 188).

It must be recalled here that the Greek Aristotle advocated a form of mixed government, or polity, in which all citizens’ rule and are ruled by turn’. Based on the belief in political obligation founded in distributive justice — the principle uniting citizen to citizen and all to the state in which equals are treated equally — this idea of the separation of powers was given greater expression by James Harrington who, in the seventeenth-century, who, argued for a written constitution.

John Locke, it must also be pointed out, suggested that liberties could be more easily protected and the social compact upheld more effectively by a separation of powers and introduced a notion that was to have radical influence through the systematic theory elaborated by Montesquieu (Thackrah 188). In his magnum opus, Baron Montesquieu expressed his belief that the English constitution epitomized the separation of powers. The English model could create an effective balance of powers within the state, avoiding the despotic tendencies inherent both in absolute monarchy and in government by the common people.

Following Montesquieu, the three powers normally considered to be separable in the exercise of government are (Thackrah 188): 1. The legislative which formulates policy and enacts it as law; 2. The executive which carries policy into action; 3. The judiciary which applies the law according to rules of procedural justice and resolves disputes. Montesquieu argued that the sign of the despot was to subsume these powers under one and to hold that one power to himself. Despots and independent judiciaries do not go hand in hand. Montesquieu thus believed in the totality of separation of powers.

The executive power should not be exercised by members of the legislature but by a monarch, subject to impeachment for actions performed ultra vires (Thackrah 188). The differentiation of powers is not clear in the Western world; for example, in Britain executive power lies with the cabinet which is formed from members of the ruling majority party in Parliament, i. e. , of the legislature, and which effectively controls the operation of Parliament. Guarantees of liberty contained in the British constitution cannot be attributed simply to a separation of powers.

The American constitution does not separate the powers completely, nor indeed could it do so without destroying the necessary unity of government (Thackrah 188; Lutz 193). Government in the Western world at least would be impossible if the three powers ceased to function in unison. As Thackrah cited from Roger Scruton, a political lexicographer, “laws enacted by the legislature must applied by the executive, and upheld by the judiciary and if a judge acts ultra vires, it must be possible for he legislature to hold him to account and for the executive to remove him from office” (189).

If all three braches were united under a single head, the opportunity for an act of government to go through rapidly would be very much greater than if three individuals or sets of individuals had to concur before that act went through: and so the separation of powers imparts a brake to the activity of government. When all three powers act in concert the matters go forward: let one of them refrain and nothing can go forward at all. This means delay. To be more specific, Montesquieu devoted four chapters of The Spirit of the Laws to a discussion of England where freedom or liberty was supposedly sustained by a balance of powers.

His anxiety lay over his observation that in his France, the intermediate powers (that is, the nobility) which moderated the power of the prince were being eroded. It must be pointed out that Montesquieu’s most influential work divided French society into three classes or trias politica (a term he coined): the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the commons. Montesquieu saw two types of governmental power existing: the sovereign and the administrative. The administrative powers included the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary.

These should be separate from and dependent upon each other. This was very novel or radical in the sense that this did away with the feudalistic structure of the French model at the time. Finally, like many Enlightenment thinkers, Montesquieu posited many other intriguing ideas. He endorsed the idea that a woman could head government (but then she supposedly could not be effective as the head of a family). He accepted hereditary aristocracy but was an ardent opponent of slavery. Another one of his more notable propositions is that climate may influence the nature of man and his society.

He in fact asserted that certain climates are superior to others as, for example, the temperate climate of France is supposedly ideal and such could affect political dynamics. His view in this regard has been referred to as being seminal in that it included material factors in the explanation of social dynamics and political forms (Althusser 102). The Thinker Lives On. Today, many governments, including ours, have been designed with concern for a separation of powers. It is without question one of the pillars of contemporary political practice, given the primary importance that society gives to the notion of democracy.

Democracy is seen as the practice of upholding the rights and interests of free peoples. Hence, so long as democracy lives, the thinker and his thoughts, Montesquieu and his thesis on the separation of governmental powers, live on. Works Cited Lutz, David. “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” American Political Science Review 78, 1 (March, 1984):189-197. Althusser, Louis. Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx, NLB, 1972. Pangle, Thomas, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism.

Chicago: 1989. Person, James Jr. , ed. “Montesquieu” (excerpts from chap. 8) in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, (Gale Publishing: 1988), vol. 7, pp. 350-52. Shackleton, Robert. Montesquieu; a Critical Biography. Oxford: 1961. Schaub, Diana J. Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s ‘Persian Letters’. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995. Spurlin, Paul M. Montesquieu in America, 1760-1801. New York: Octagon Books, 1961. Thackrah, J. R. Politics. Oxford, London: Heinemann Publishing, 1990.